By Maria Padhila
Each month at the New Moon, I put a different pendant on my silver chain to bring in that Moon’s energy. This past New Moon, I put three charms on the chain: an ouroboros, a milagro of a woman’s form, and a puffy silver heart, that last item from the handfuls of costume jewelry I got from Isaac’s grandmother. She bought jewelry everywhere she traveled; much of it she would sell and then donate the profits to her favorite charities, but she was also never without perfectly coordinated accessories, and her granddaughters, in-laws and great-granddaughters benefited from that.
When I run, the three clink and jingle together. I sound like my old cat with his collar full of tags — he was a big, mean marmalade and very proud of his bling. I put three on there because one is not enough. There was so much happening between New Moons — the eclipse that kicked it off, the Full Moon eclipse, the transit of Venus, planets changing signs, planets going in and out of retrograde — I’m fairly much beside myself. The confusion and exhaustion has me in a constant struggle to not give in.
If I were ‘only’ a mother with a job and a husband, I would still be on the edge of being overwhelmed. Why not? Most of the women I know who are ‘only’ doing that are. But I make the mistake of thinking, of creating, and worst of all, of having more love. Isaac, with resigned humor and a slight bitterness, points to an easy solution — give up the boyfriend. But he knows that would hurt me, and he loves me, and that means he doesn’t want me to hurt. It is a little bitter, the places we get ourselves into.
Today I’ve cheated a little bit and driven to a park a little ways up the trail where I usually run while my daughter is in her hours-long dance classes. I just couldn’t stand running out as far as I had time to go — about 40 minutes — and then having to turn around and come back. I needed to see what was down the line on that trail.
I’m finally at the place again, after all the lying around and not being able to run, where five miles feels normal again, a baseline. It’s not making a lot of difference to my body yet, though it feels good to be sore in the way you get when you’re training. I need to lose eight pounds, and Chris needs to gain eight. With his disability, it is a constant struggle to keep him calibrated. It’s the kind of thing people don’t see unless they know him very well. I wish I could give him my weight.
Often when I run, I do magic. I choose a compass direction, I pay attention to the magnetic lines of the paths and trails and roads I’m passing along and the Earth energy I’m passing over. I recite spells and mantras; I treat each footfall like a prayer wheel; I watch for birds and plants that might have messages. Even the mundane and man-made can be a message. I’ve found playing cards, broken CDs, bits of paper with cryptic words to learn from. I pick up trash on some runs; other times I just keep on going. There’s surprisingly little trash in the woods.
I also ‘play’ music in my head. I never use earphones. Stupid move, not to be able to hear a bike or a car or another person coming up behind you; foolish move to cut yourself off from all that information and the sounds of the world around you. Because I’m losing my hearing (as well as my eyes being a bit off; I’m in a slow slide to becoming Helen Keller, though with a lot less graciousness and compassion), I have more appreciation, I think, for what I can hear. Today I’m hearing Radiohead. Isaac took me to their concert last weekend as an anniversary present. I could feel that as a turn of the knife if I chose. I’m a woman who doesn’t remember, doesn’t care, doesn’t deal with anniversaries, birthdays, holidays. They’re interesting bits of information astrologically, but beyond that, come on. I also don’t like big arena shows. I also don’t like spending large amounts of money for spectator experiences.
This is what it’s like for the people who love me. I’ll tell them all the reasons why I can’t get behind what they want to give. I’ll tell them all the reasons why loving me and offering me anything at all is ridiculous. But if they persist, I’m in. It was a great show.
It’s the same with writing. If it’s for hire, OK, that’s a craft and I struggle. But the rest doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot to do with me. You sit down, and let the gods do their thing. They write it. This, I realize in crossing and recrossing a creek, is probably why I can’t manage to get paid for any of what I have termed, for lack of a better word, my ‘real’ writing. Make the fucking check out to Esu, to Mercury, any number of the messengers who are my totems, to Thor or Pallas, to Eros or Eris, you tell me, because they rarely do. Tell me their names, I mean. They just tell me what they want to appear, and there it is. Thank you, thank you, thank you, I pray with each step.
Don’t think I’m not thankful for this gift, even if I don’t seem to know what the hell to do with it, and haven’t figured out what the hell to do with it in what is now more than a quarter century of getting it, over and over. They could stop this minute if they chose. Is it an offering of love? Or am I being used, for some purpose of theirs I could divine if I had the time? Or both?
I hear Thom Yorke’s postmodern, Celtic hill-country reedy wail trail off in my head, like a passing train. In an interstellar burst… I’m back to change the uuuuuu-niv-verse… But the words aren’t right. It’s “save the universe,” not “change.” Same thing?
Since that first eclipse, I kept hearing that this is the day, this is the time, this is the point where the planets will click into a certain configuration, and everything will change. Did it, and I just can’t see it yet?
What do I want to change? The question is sounding with every footfall, here in the third mile. What do I want? What. Do. I. Want. I want to get paid for ‘real’ writing for the gods so I don’t have to write evil shit for demons for money anymore. I want to love who I want, to accept them fully, without seeking to change them. I want the same for myself — I want to be loved not despite my flaws but in full recognition of them.
The story of all this Gemini action — I’m Gemini ascendant and identify most strongly with that sign — is that I will become more self-aware. But all the action, frustratingly, is still in my 12th house, not in the degrees in the 1st, where it would all be plain. I remember a long retrograde with Mars in my first house; running was so easy then. Powerful. Not with these configurations. Confusion, questioning, feeling like everything I want to be true is self-delusion.
It’s true that I have more awareness of all kinds. I am seeing auras like big billboards over people’s heads, seeing the meaning behind everything they are doing and saying, seeing how they’re shoring themselves up, bringing me and others down, deluding themselves and trying to fool me. I am in a continual game with both Isaac and Chris, catching them in what I see as unconscious — unaware — expressions of hostility and control.
I say things to Chris like: “I ask you what you would like to eat, and you inevitably name the one thing I don’t have and can’t give you. You do this so you can deny me the pleasure of satisfying you and so you can deny yourself satisfaction. You do this so you can say: I will not get what I want, I don’t deserve to get what I want. I will be denied what I want even from the ones who love me. You do this so it will be easy to say someday that I’m not good enough, that I don’t really love you, and I will be easy to leave.”
I say things to Isaac like: “You call and ask me to do things around the house, and you give me minute instructions on when and how to do them, and you lie to yourself that you’re doing this because you care about our home life. The reality is that you are trying to control me, to herd me, like a dog would, pushing me a little this way, a little that, back to the barn, because you are afraid I will graze my way into the woods and be lost forever — or worse, that I would survive. You do this because you want to rescue me, because you need to see yourself as a rescuer.”
This is not the way you endear yourself to the people you love. It might not even be the way to treat anyone. The boundaries of my awareness are as nebulous as everything else; I want everyone else to be ‘aware’ along with me. I’m insulted, hurt, at the refusal of others to notice this acute perceptual ability I have. It’s so amazing, and it’s just pissing you off! How dare you! I seem to have no sense for how hurtful and invasive this demand of mine is. Realize that you are both my lover and my enemy, I am demanding, every day, not only realize it but love it, love what you are doing, the tragedy of our human inability to love without resentment, without jealousy, without wanting to hurt the same person for whom desire makes us ache.
And I want them to love me for doing it, too. I don’t know if this kind of love is possible.
A messenger is not at ease in the 12th house. A messenger gets lost. There’s no path, no taverns, no fresh horses waiting at each leg of the journey. You make the delivery to a hut overgrown with weeds, a place whose inhabitants, the ones who are supposed to receive the message, have long gone. So you break the wax seal and read the message, break the trust that is your only value as a messenger. The message is: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you, Mystes. I went dancing, then had awesome dreams. Feeling much clearer now.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Devaproject/113302145419594
Love activation celebration!
Dear Liminali…
Hear your lament – so sorry I am not more present for your dilemma. Know you are loved and appreciated. You are a strong mind in a weak neighborhood – quoting my old friend. Flow and surge.
M
Wise Aword, beautiful and strong. Powerfull.
That is, “we are looking in the mirror” in a Chiron-ic sort of way.
I am hearing so much that ‘sounds like’ Narcissus on Galactic Center.
Looking in the Mirror we are – in a Chironic sort of way.
xo
“Confusion, questioning, feeling like everything I want to be true is self-delusion. ” This, so much this.
“floating on an ocean and confused”
http://youtu.be/jgS_2eW4RTM
Effin’ Neptune, transiting all up in my 5th house, oozing over my Chiron/Mars conjunction and opposite my Pluto. Going with the flow now….
darkmary, thank you I agree. one message, one statement, giving and recieving are the same. It is forgiveness which reflects us there.
Maria,
There are always messages, aren’t there? The phenomenal world as shape-shifter, offering itself, its glories, its piss, its complete and fundamental sanity as our mirror. On my walk a few weeks ago, I found, quite literally at my feet, a piece of cardboard with handwriting rendered in permanent marker: Fishnet House: Re-stock. The word re-stock was circled in emphasis. Reality has a sense of humor. It doesn’t matter to say what that message meant to me, but I laughed and I cried.
When we are the messenger, we are also the recipient of the message. In that way, the message is always received. It was always intended for us, anyway, even if we allow ourselves the illusion that it was intended for another. In my life, I have realized that nearly all the messages can be reduced to one simple question, asked again and again: How and where are you blocking the flow of unconditional love in your life, Theresa?
It seems the rest of the messages can be reduced to one simple statement, but then you already know that, because you delivered the message: “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” That is unconditional love.
First, Maria, thank you for the insight. I see that you publish poetry under this moniker. I am not searching for your ‘real’ name – just a sense that you own this process. That, in the face of cultural and social opposition, you wouldn’t melt into facelessness – “nothing to see here, move along.”
It is of course, Eric’s decision to permit the scrim; it just began at an odd time – and no one seemed to remark the sudden reversal of his rather um, inflexible, position.
Alexander, it is good to read from you again.
“What do we do exactly with shadow material?” Alex – this all seems to be about the recent Venus transit of the sun – the integration and acceptance of the unloved, shadow parts of ourselves.
(continued from last entry)
…what shall we DO with it? Maria, you raise this question acutely as if holding up a mirror. We can get lost in a maze of subjective truth just as easily as becoming imprisoned in the quest for objective truth. An interesting aspect of the subjective sides of truth is that we might actually learn something new about ourselves if we can access it minus the shame. This is what the whole gaff is about. Nietzsche highlighted well, the psychologically disastrous aspects of heteronomy and religion’s role in undermining autonomy (in the case of the Judeo-Christian tradition, in terms of Adam and Eve seeking independent knowledge by partaking the forbidden fruit) and so the Will to Power serves as liberation from these roots of personal sickness. Foucault huilt upon this in exploring just how the Will to Power got dressed up as the Will to Truth, as a means of resurrecting the old core installed shaming truths. This time giving them a higher source of authority than any old tradition-specific notion of God but now the superior, unassailable bastion, of ultimate truth, objective and certifiable, a tool of oppression successfully internalised within the psyche.
Maria, your writing here is an invitation addressing us again to break out. Of course, what we will need is precisely the compass to allow us to work together to finally egress that murky 12th house fog. Let us learn together how to own and celebrate our subjective truths in such a way that we do not get lost because we have learnt to reach out and clasp one another’s hands..
This article is notable in several ways. I particularly like the 12th house messenger journey yo depict in summation, Maria. The whole feel of the image and the astrological theme of the 12th, along with your style of writing and autobiographical self-questioning, altogether serves to raise a crucial question which is “What do we do exactly with shadow material?”
Now, if we took the conventional analytical tools that might be deployed to answer it from the therapist’s chair, we would be using some frame of reference involving some sort of claim to objective, certifiable truth – the kind that ends up judging us, indeed ultimately battering our sanity into a pliant submission, where we may end up taking all the world’s (our environment’s) shit on board.. to no liberating avail. Now, it seems to me Maria, that your writing as a Mercurial conduit from the other-realms, serves to amalgamate two usually dissonant categories of human reality.. truth and subjectivity. Baldly engaged with as polarities it would appear that these two will make impossible bedfellows! But the whole notion of subjective truth, easily perceivable as an oxymoron, comes up to greet us. All of our Western ‘training’ quickly rushes in with discomfort to silence the monster. But we need to see that monster because it is ourselves in denial.
What strikes me is the relevance here of both Nietzsche’s Will to Power and Foucault’s related Will to Truth. Where does shadow come from? Is it simply MY stuff? Well I own it but did I ask to? When we can’t easily expose and deal with our shadow (does that mean objectively analyse and eradicate)
“When I’m tempted to speak an inconvenient truth (and this heat, that’s pretty much quarter-hourly) – I try to check my physical state first: am I hot? thirsty? tired? stressed? If so, I go take care of the the body first. ”
… that might have been useful to read at 3:00 am this morning…. oops…
We have a strict policy on the use of pen names by our writers: that we (our editors) know exactly who they are, and that they have a legitimate reason for using the pen name. In other words, it’s not for no reason (unless it’s an established professional name; we would not make Bob Dylan call himself Robert Zimmerman were he to do a guest column), and we must be able to vouch for the writer.
I have a strong preference for writers using real names, though I understand that there are occasionally reasons for the use of professional names. Usually they are bad reasons; sometimes they are good ones. I am well versed in the problems of pen names and handles, which mainly involve not taking responsibility for what one is saying. In the case of a writer we bring on board who we allow to use a pen name, in addition to having high expectations on the writer, WE are taking that responsibility.
In any event, the guideline is the same for both contributors and commenters: participation is contingent upon our knowing who you actually are, to our satisfaction. With the contributors, we must know in advance, and we put Maria through an exhaustive vetting process lasting about four months before allowing her to publish. With commenters, slugs, handles and whatnot are fine (meaning that I will grudgingly accept them) until there is an issue (such as trolling, getting nasty, intimidating others, etc.), then the person will get a polite email from Chelsea or me asking what’s up and requesting phone contact.
I am aware that in the past I have made a HUGE deal out of “leaders” in the polyamory community not identifying themselves, and twice I left the National Poly Leadership Summit in objection. I was clear with them and with my readers that I was not demanding that they identify themselves publicly (though that would have been preferable and I think it’s hypocritical to call yourself a leader and not give your name). What I objected to is that certain people would not identify themselves to ME, hence I could not check them out or vouch for them in any way.
Yep, I’m protecting other people. A lot more people know me under my writing name, which I’ve used for about 16 years, online, in publications, and in live performances, such as they are, than under my given name. I also used it for pagan advocacy work.
Actually, Isaac is a lot less uptight about things in the two years since this has been going on (and the four or so we’ve been talking about it) than before. I spent the first couple years of marriage grappling with being sucked into his family so airlessly that i had no life of my own at all. But…but…that’s how things are done, right? The Family stays together above all, and the men do what they do, and the women all hang out together, and everyone loves it, right? It was a tough one, and I believed for years i was the one at fault who needed to get with it, and couldn’t speak up, and when I did, I wasn’t listened to for a long time. Everyone wanted the old way, where i was told how things were gonna be and I complied with a smile, as I got more and more depressed. But then, because I changed, he started to change.
As hard as it is, we both feel–or he says, anyway, tho I’m sure I could pick it to bits as I do everything else!–that we’re closer now than ever before, and enjoying each other more. He likes that I’m always changing. He’s funny that way. 😉
All relationships are complicated, and they all take adjustments and go through changes. Who’s to say the guys aren’t the ones who should re-examine whether they want to be with me? It would be heartbreaking, but each has to decide for his or herself what’s workable, what’s intolerable, and what’s negotiable (and those things might change and change and change). Our commitment to our daughter’s health and growth is the only thing that will never change.
Isaac and I are very different, and some people wonder what we’re doing together. Maybe that’s made it easier to deal with radical change–we’ve had to work hard to learn how to understand each other and still do. People who have always smooth sailing never have to learn that. We both came into marriage used to managing people and giving orders. It was hard to drop that with each other. We’re both investigative types and can prod at things endlessly yet keep a certain detachment. He’s funny as hell, which is hugely important to me. I could go on and on…but the sometimes one-sided presentation of him here isn’t the whole story.
We have very different “management styles,” too. He’s a detail person and I’m about getting lots of input and playing to strengths. All that’s to say that many of the issues we go around and around on have been there long before this change in our relationship, and they may be there yet after we change more. Or there may be new ones; mmmm, what fun, huh?
Mystes,
“*(I am still weirded-out by the fact that Eric went on this ‘use your real name’ rant last year and then immediately began publishing you under a pseudonym).”
That pseudonym even carries into her FB. As I read it, it was to protect her (and her family) because she is not “out of the closet” so to speak in her galaxy of friends, neighbors, co-workers and/or maybe even extended family. I have no problem with protecting someone’s anonymity, especially when the consequences of divulging her identity might mean not only the loss of her job or standing in her community but the loss of her child to CPS because of some ignorant ideas of what child abuse is. So Eric’s keeping her real name under wraps is understandable in that light. Just saying.
“But Maria, the vibe I’m picking up around Isaac makes me *really* wish he was more comfortable with your open marriage. If, after a year, his discomfort is not decreasing, it might be time to rethink your commitments. I know from whence I speak on this issue, but of course your mileage may vary.”
I have to agree with you on this one, Mystes (though I don’t have experience with it like you do). At least three times she has written that Isaac isn’t happy with things as they are. I know the line “But he knows that would hurt me, and he loves me, and that means he doesn’t want me to hurt” seems like it covers it but that same argument could be reversed; if she loved Isaac, she would not continue to hurt *him* with this either.
After all, what goes one way also goes the other. It isn’t fair to have only one way expectations. There’s also the difference between first commitments and second commitments and which have children and all of that (rethink her commitments, as you said).
As you said, her experience may vary.
“Maria”*
Well, I agree with Burning River – your directness is refreshing and helpful (as far as it goes, see below). You show what we’d really rather not see – which is always good in the long run; but I also agree with Carrie: some things just don’t pass muster in the ‘I’m-saying-this-because-I-love-you’ test.
When I’m tempted to speak an inconvenient truth (and this heat, that’s pretty much quarter-hourly) – I try to check my physical state first: am I hot? thirsty? tired? stressed? If so, I go take care of the the body first.
As for whether or not our people love us for this um, directness. Well, of course they do! Otherwise they wouldn’t be our people. They/we grow a set of feints/barriers/diversionary tactics in response to the fluctuations in the inconvenient truth bomblettes; and when we’ve had enough, there’s usually some other form of corrective action (hence the utility of space out here in the time/space continuum). But space doesn’t mean love-lost. It just means breathe!!
But Maria, the vibe I’m picking up around Isaac makes me *really* wish he was more comfortable with your open marriage. If, after a year, his discomfort is not decreasing, it might be time to rethink your commitments. I know from whence I speak on this issue, but of course your mileage may vary.
M
*(I am still weirded-out by the fact that Eric went on this ‘use your real name’ rant last year and then immediately began publishing you under a pseudonym).
You bet, Dora–it gets very Morton salt girl ( carrying a salt box that has a picture of herself carrying a salt box, infinite…) when you start thinking about it. Another 12th house quality! Also, am I probing so much in an attempt to sabatoge relationships? More ? Than answers, but if I can laugh at myself about it…I think I’m mostly trying to figure out how to be honest and own what’s mine, and that includes what I see, so it gets confusing.
Funniest thing is both guys, in the space between when this was filed and right now, have been so beautifully honest and aware and living I’m like damn coyote, why’d you write that!
hi Maria,
you’ve never seen me posting before so you know next to nothing for me, yet I’ve been following the trails your articles leave here, the good, the bad and the deeply human . . Yet I come here today with a question and I hope it won’t seem rude of me, cause it comes from the most sincere place in me . . Isn’t reasoning your loved ones’ behavior and throwing it at them as you do, yet another way to control? and isn’t the -faintly heard- protest of you not being loved as you would have liked, yet another way to reach a place that repeats how, in the end, you are, or will be, denied what you want?
I pose these questions to you as I would -and often do- pose them to myself only to wonder whether we can see in our loved ones more than our own view of them, our description of them in our own vocabulary . . and how much is this part of love or part of the quandaries of it . . And whether, we finally do love the people we love because they offer us an accurate reflection of the terms we use when we come across ourselves . .
-in earnest, this ever questioning mind
Maria, “I treat each footfall like a prayer wheel” is just one of your messages to me, and I thank you. I also appreciate so much, what I call, your radical honesty. You have it in spades and it lifts up my world. It’s your ‘woman-made’ message, for all of us, who gather to listen.
Your honesty is helpful. Your honesty is appreciated by me. Thank you.
Hi Maria. I have a few questions. About this piece, generally. But, the final paragraph hit me over the head. Not sure if there is a way to have an exchange on this. But I am not in a huge mood to broadcast widely. So if there is I way to have a conversation, that would be great. If not (you sound crazy busy) that’s fine, as well.
Thanks,
xm
All relationships are challenging! I certainly do not have it all figured out. But in listening to your dialog, please allow me to offer, from my personal experience i have found that concentrating on negative thoughts and feelings of resentment can make you stressed and have a spiraling down effect on relationships.
Finding balance is key. Making personal space and time for yourself, your interests and creative outlets, so that you don’t look for, or expect this from others, your situation, or outside yourself. Then in relationship you value yourself (and they you) and also this time with others more.
You’re so beautiful. : )
Maria,
Sounds to me like you are in the stage of being “Strider”.
And there came a day when he passed through that time of growing into himself, and took his place as King.
To some, he was King all along. It was only he who could not see it in himself.
Thank you for another beautiful and candid essay.
xo
“This is not the way you endear yourself to the people you love. It might not even be the way to treat anyone.The boundaries of my awareness are as nebulous as everything else; I want everyone else to be ‘aware’ along with me. I’m insulted, hurt, at the refusal of others to notice this acute perceptual ability I have. It’s so amazing, and it’s just pissing you off! How dare you! I seem to have no sense for how hurtful and invasive this demand of mine is. Realize that you are both my lover and my enemy, I am demanding, every day, not only realize it but love it, love what you are doing, the tragedy of our human inability to love without resentment, without jealousy, without wanting to hurt the same person for whom desire makes us ache.
And I want them to love me for doing it, too. I don’t know if this kind of love is possible.”
I would say there are some things better left unsaid. If the aim is to enlighten, words like those (which seem to have judgement in them) usually do not lead to the outcome desired. Pissing people off doesn’t change them. BTDT and I found (in my experience) that it doesn’t work.
I learned that if I want to be accepted as I am, I must in turn accept them as they are; control issues, games, hidden agendas, unenlightened, unaware, and all. That’s how it works; I cannot have it all my way. What’s applies to them applies to me. That’s what I learned. Your experience may vary.