Homeless, Jobless and Carless

Good morning,

Most of you know that I am essentially homeless, jobless and carless.

On November 20, 2004 I was in a wreck that cost my 2000 Subaru Forester, which interestingly I bought on November 20, 2000, which is my mother’s birthday. I was under-insured, trying to save money, because I was not working enough to make my rent and car payment and other bills.

It was the beginning of a very interesting phase of my life, in the Chinese curse sense (May you live in interesting times.) At the same time, I have been well cared for throughout this entire phase and I don’t see that ever changing. I feel more secure in the world, not less.

For many reasons, I’ve been learning for several years that the best thing to do if something wants to leave my life, is let it. “Let go, let God” they say.

When the wreck happened, I had just moved out of a home I’d been in nearly 4 years, the longest I’ve lived anywhere since I moved here. I was in shock. But my ex-boyfriend had a spare car, a purple Mustang, that I could drive. It was a little odd. The ignition was a switch, not a key ignition, for example. But it got me to my temp job and back until the fuel pump died. Something he was expecting and planned to fix himself, but he couldn’t get to it right then.

I spent another month or two trying to figure out what to do. My landlord graciously let me out of my lease. A friend offered me a home (in Alabama) in exchange for cooking for him, which I accepted for about 3 months.

Up until that point, I thought I was going to be buying things and expanding into the new home. I live on my Jupiter midheaven line. (Look up astrocartography for more information.) That basically means expansion, fortune, teaching, writing, etc. However, at the same time Pluto is moving through my Sun sign and digging up the deep, the old and the hidden.

Instead, I gave away everything I could let go of before I moved because I was going from a 2 floor, 3 bedroom home to sharing a 2 bedroom loft with a friend. That was Purge #1 moving to my Saturn midheaven. It was truly the hardest. I had to give away my precious, precious cats. They could not go with me. They did find an excellent home on 33 acres with cat doors and carpeted cat castles all through the house. I got regular photos and emails from their new daddy.

Then, when I realized that Alabama is defintely not home, another friend had a brother who was moving back here and bringing an empty van to which I could attach a trailer with my things. So perfect, so wonderful. It was beautiful.

I came home and put everything in storage. I moved into one bedroom with 2 other women. That was temporary, anyway, just 3 months there. Then I moved in with Jared, and we talked about how we figured we could be roommates for 5 years easy. The room was large enough to be my bedroom, library and office. The closet was huge and held everything. I did do another purge, but I thought it was the last one.

But no.

After I lived there about 6 months, Jared decided to put the house up for sale. Suddenly, I need a place to live again. So, I called my friend, Aubrey, and she said I could move into her guest room and do Clutter Clearing in exchange for rent until I went to Europe.

Yes, somehow, in spite of all the temporary workers being let go instead of getting permanent jobs as we had hoped, I was jobless within 2 months of moving in with Aubrey.

Laura gave me a car back in about March, which was a godsend. But without income, I didn’t know how I was going to finish paying for my trip for school. As a last resort, partly because the deadline for cancellation was long past, I sold that car to make the rest of the money to go to school.

I did not know when I would be back. I was open to staying there in Europe and finding work, if I could, but my money and my courage ran out at the same time. I gave up and came back home to Aubrey’s.

I was blessed to put everything I own in storage in the basement of a friend of a friend’s home. I kept only 2 suitcases worth of belongings to take with me. Nothing more.

So, I have been living out of 2 suitcases from September through November, so far.

In the meantime, Aubrey was hired for a job that she heard about within 10 days of beginning to Clear her Clutter, and she was moving out of state. We decided I could stay and help her get the remodeling of the house done and live there until it sold.

And here I sit.

What it looks like is that I have bought the time to write this book.

Without a car payment, working in exchange for rent, and having no regular job to take my time, only a few Clutter Clearing and spirtual guidance clients, which keep me afloat (nearly), I can write.

For whatever reason, that is what I do.

Earlier this week, I was able to get a ride to the basement where my things are stored. You should have seen me. While it has only been 3 months, I’ve been living in an empty house with nothing but a bed and 2 suitcases worth of clothes, a few books, and thank God, a small boom box for music.

I felt like a little homeless girl going through my things in the basement. I mostly wanted my bathrobe and some winter sweaters to wear. I had to look for them a bit, and as I found things, feelings of appreciation and gratitude washed through me.

I was overjoyed when I found my big wooden salad bowl. I found myself hugging it and telling Julie, who gave me a ride, “Oh, my salad bowl! And look, my bathrobe!”

These little things are not so little anymore.

Yes, maybe some day I’ll have another Subaru Forester. I want one. Some day I’ll have a home where I can stay a few years. And of course, I want to offer my words, my services to the world through work.

Right now, I’m just thrilled to have my bathrobe and my salad bowl.

Love, Ann

My HolyDay Card to You

Hi All,

I’m still working on finishing 50,000 words for “Ann’s Tale: There’s Another Mile to Go” in which a feisty young woman finds freedom and healing as she learns that our worst problems contain the juiciest gifts.

www.nanowrimo.org

 

These are the two most inspiring HolyDay songs I know. I’m sending them as my Christmas Card to You.

“The Christians & the Pagans”

Amber called her uncle, said “We’re up here for the holiday
Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay”
And her Christ-loving uncle watched his wife hang Mary on a tree
He watched his son hang candy canes all made with red dye number three
He told his niece, “It’s Christmas eve, I know our life is not your style”
She said, “Christmas is like Solstice, and we miss you and it’s been awhile”

/ G C Am D / / Em C Am D / / G C Am D / /

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said
Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses

/ G C Em D / / Em C Am D / Em C Am D G – /

The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch
Till Timmy turned to Amber and said, “Is it true that you’re a witch?”
His mom jumped up and said, “The pies are burning,” and she hit the kitchen
And it was Jane who spoke, she said, “It’s true, your cousin’s not a Christian”

“But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share
And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere”

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
And where does magic come from, I think magic’s in the learning
Cause now when Christians sit with Pagans only pumpkin pies are burning

When Amber tried to do the dishes, her aunt said, “Really, no, don’t bother”
Amber’s uncle saw how Amber looked like Tim and like her father
He thought about his brother, how they hadn’t spoken in a year
He thought he’d call him up and say, “It’s Christmas and your daughter’s
here”
He thought of fathers, sons and brothers, saw his own son tug his sleeve
saying
“Can I be a Pagan?” Dad said, “We’ll discuss it when they leave”

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold

Christmas Song
Jethro Tull

Once in a royal David’s city
Stood a lonely cattle shed
Where a mother held her baby.
You’d do well to remember the things he later said.

When you’re stuffing yourselves at the Christmas parties
You’ll just laugh when I tell you to take a running jump.
You’re missing the point I\’m sure does not need making:
The Christmas spirit is not what you drink.

So how can you laugh when your own mother’s hungry,
And how can you smile when the reasons for smiling are wrong?
And if I’ve just messed up your thoughtless pleasures
Remember, if you wish, this is just a Christmas song.

(Hey! Santa! Pass us that bottle, will you?)

Love, Ann

Divorcing From Clarity

I mentioned in “Being With Myself” that I would come back to the idea that I divorced from clarity, and then I didn’t write it. I decided this is worth a blog of its own.

It’s a little odd to be writing the divorce before I write the story of the marriage, so let me back up a bit.

The marriage was guided and miraculous. What I tend to tell people is that I was divinely guided into the marriage. It’s just that I was never told that I would never be guided out of the marriage. And so it was.

Marvin and I met in 1985 just as I was learning Rebirthing BreathWork, in the form of Vivation. I had separated from a girlfriend just before we met. I went to a class on Rudra Meditation and he was there, as was D’Artagnan. Well, that’s one of my pet names for him, anyway. I thought both of them were attractive and it was Marvin who invited me to stay with him that night. He said his girlfriend had just broken up with him. He did not want sex. He just wanted to be with feminine energy. I said, “yes.”

He called a few days later and told me that his girlfriend wanted to try again, so he was not available for a relationship. That was fine. For the next five years she continued to leave him every 6 months or so and he and I remained friends. I continued to do Rudra meditation. I had developed a terrible crush on his friend, D’Artagnon, and he and I were friends. We all had meals together and eventually I moved into the ashram where they lived.

At some point, I moved out of the ashram and had not seen Marvin for a while. It was late June when I was at Whole Foods with D’Artagnon and we ran into Marvin shopping.

It was one of those scenes you see in movies. The clouds parted. The birds sang. He asked for my number and promised to call in a few days. He asked if I had plans for 4th of July. I did not. So we made plans to watch fireworks together.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, he spent that weekend in Arizona on his ex-girlfriend’s couch, being sure that things with them were really finished. They were.

He and I both watched fireworks and made fireworks that night.

We had both been doing our 80’s New Age self improvement relationship homework, so soon he asked me what I was looking for in a relationship. He said he had a list, 3 pages, himself. Why, so did I? We made a date to compare lists.

Unfortunately, cats were on my list and not on his, so I gave away my precious kitties and married Marvin.

About a week later, he said to me, “I hope you’re caught up on conversation with me, because I don’t talk much.”

Oh no!

That’s how I learned that conversation was one of my high priorities in relationship. Marvin was a salesman. He talked enough to get the job done and then he was done. Well, I felt so guided into our relationship. We both did. So, I stayed.

And stayed.

And stayed.

I refer to Marvin now as “the husband who was with me during my angriest years, while I was healing from incest.”

That is about how it was. I only started into counseling in 1985. Marvin and I married July 4, 1989. I had been doing my NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) Practitioner Training. One of the goals I was working toward in the process of learning these techniques, was marriage. I wrote that three page list of what I was looking for in a husband. Quite a lot, really. We were encouraged to give lots of detail in order to make the goal real to us and tangible.

It was.

So, I figured that my job was to stay and work out the issues in myself. I tried. He tried. It just wasn’t working.

In the meantime, I had developed serious pains in my wrists and joints, went on Worker’s Comp for a while, and started seeing a chiropractor. My first chiropractor referred me to a type of chiropractic called “Network,” and eventually, I met and started working for, Dr. Lance Wright. (Dr. Wright is the creator of Flow, see www.flowwith.com for more information.)

It was during this time, June 3, 1995, I believe, that I had an adjustment with Lance that left me feeling very high and clear, as it usually did.

I got up off the table, and said, “I have to get a divorce.”

Lance said simply, “I know.”

That was it. I went home to Marvin and told him.

He said, “I’ve been trying to think of ways to get you to leave.”

Well, that was pretty straightforward. I lived there another 6 months while I got busy on student loans and going back to school to finish my undergraduate degree. I moved out and did finish my degree in research psychology.

When I was done, I was ready to move, and did so, based on an astrocartography reading by Topaz Weis, whom I most highly recommend!

That, as they say, is another story.

The point here is that my divorce decision was spontaneous, made when my spine was clear, and everything started falling into place thereafter. This is an example of deciding from clarity. I did not hate my husband and want to leave. I did not idealize some fantasy life I’d have without him. It was just time to go and we parted, as friends. And friends we are to this day.

May clarity be yours, Ann

Being With Myself, Take Two

I’m listening to Scott Medina’s CD of kirtan chants.

“Sita Ram Jai Jai Sita Ram Jai Jai Sita Ram Namoh”

I’m looking at this page. My fingers move. If I think about them, I see them in my lower peripheral vision. I can see my green shirt that way, too. There is a tiny pine table under the laptop. The laptop is a charcoal black Sony VAIO, whatever that is. The battery doesn’t work. (I laugh. A guy I know says he had the same one and the first thing he said was, “Does your battery work?” His didn’t, either. I’d accept donations of a newer laptop if you want to support my work to write this blog and this book.)

There I am, right out of my business in a couple of sentences.

Okay, back at it.

Being with myself. I actually typed “Beign” first and backspaced to correct it. Why? Because I was out of my business. I was thinking of you, my imaginary reader, who would wonder what I meant, and maybe of my English and Spelling teachers who live in my head . . . and make me a pretty good writer. . . or do they? Read e e cummings sometime or Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll and then tell me about my English-teacher-in-my head.)

See? Can’t even manage it for two sentences. Heck, I can’t even manage it for one misspelled word!

Okay, so I am communicating… “co” means “with.” So, I’m inherently split into at least two to just write, but I’ve heard of authors being in a zone where that is not the case. Eckhart Tolle is said to have only been able to write his book while visiting California. When he was elsewhere he couldn’t do it. I should look that up. It’s interesting.

Natalie Goldberg, writing teacher extraordinaire, although I couldn’t even finish her novel, Banana Rose, talks about being in this moment. She also studies Zen meditation. She brings that awareness to her writing. There is a very present-moment-ness to her writing even when she talks about the distant past.

I want to do that.

I want to be in this moment writing and letting the words flow from my fingers like I am

*sigh*

I nearly had it there for a minute.

*pause*

Practice. That’s why I practice.

That’s why the 50,000 words I’m attempting to write for NaNoWriMo.org (please make a contribution. At least half of it goes to support children’s libraries in Viet Nam) . . . anyway, that’s why so many of these 50,000 words are drek. Yes, drek. Garbage, incineratable, even.

I can write a paper for school, you know, 15 to 20 pages, on just about anything and figure it’s good enough.

I have been paid for writing 300 to 700 word articles that I ripped off in 15 to 30 minutes each. And they weren’t half bad.

But we’re talking BOOK length here. OMG

This 50,000 words will amount to a mere 175 pages approximately.

How many words does it take to make a book?

Well, taking a few off the shelf here, let me see:

Kabbalistic Healing by Jason Shulman, 184 pages… trade paperback

Move Your Stuff Change Your Life Karen Rauch Carter, 232 pages… trade paperback

Macroscope by Piers Anthony . . . 480 pages, mass market paperback

   (Note Anthony is the only fiction at my bedside at the moment.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott . . . 237 pages trade

Okay, let me go to the bookshelf for more fiction.

Star Dance by Spider & Jeanne Robinson . . . 288 pages, mass market

Grumbles from the Grave

… and at this point, my laptop decides to save this post. Or, really, I hit a key somewhere and landed myself in Save mode. Reminds me of a cartoon I kept for years and years when I was teaching software and working at help desks. The picture shows a business man, in a suit, with a briefcase, standing on the Moon with the Earth in the background, looking down at a little alien guy who is saying to him, “Think back. Which key did you press?”

See?  See?

And I had just typed in the page count for 2 more books! Which I lost.

What does it take just to be with myself, my feelings, in this present moment?

I don’t know. Sometimes I do it. I’m just walking along and I’m suddenly in some altered consciousness and there I am.

Right now, I think I’ll practice in a hot bath.

Love, Ann

Intuitive Connections

When I suddenly find myself aroused at 4 in the afternon when I’m neither ovulating nor premenstrual, I suspect that someone with whom I have what Kinky Friedman calls a “current pelvic affiliation” is thinking of me in a lascivious manner.

Don’t you?

I’ve been aware of these connections for at least 26 years, maybe more. Often, I can confirm them.

I first confirmed them when I was working just a couple of miles from home back in the 80’s when I was married to Charles. He didn’t go in to work until late in the afternoon. So, sometimes, I would come home for lunch, unexpectedly, when I had one of these err… urges, and find him with his pants to his knees and Penthouse in his lap. That was sometimes okay. It was my subscription, anyway. Sometimes, I was able to redirect the energy to myself.

Other times, I have to make a phone call and ask or maybe I compare notes later.

I’m usually correct. It’s much easier when I have only one CPA, and most of the time, it only occurs with the one I’m most connected to.

How it happens, I’m not completely sure. I do love Spider Robinson’s novels, though, particularly for the idea in many of them that the human race is going to “get telepathic.” It shows up in the Callahan series a couple of times and is a huge part of Star Dancer, which he wrote with his wife, Jeanne, much earlier in his career than I realized until I checked. Damn, he’s good.

While I think sex is a strong feeling that may be easier to sense, this connection also shows up in other ways, not always sexual.

For example, once upon a time, I was “taking 30 minutes,” again, in the 80’s, which is basically my midday meditation. My husband, Charles, was at work. He was sitting outside on a bench having lunch. When he came home that night, he started telling me about this big huge bumblebee that had circled his head while he was having lunch. I told him that I had had a kind of OOBE (Out Of Body Experience) during my midday meditation in which I felt I was flying over someone’s head and circling. I did not even recognize it as him.

We compared times and basically agreed that something unusual had occured. It was possible that I had looked like a bumblebee and was flying over his head during lunch.

These connections are both comforting and inspiring to me. They seem to mean that I am not alone. I kinda like that.

Love, Ann

Being with Myself

It was my former husband who suggested this blog. (Thank you)

He did something really sweet last week.

He sent me one of my favorite songs, Queen’s Fat Bottom Girls, on a voice mail. He was right in line with something that was bothering me last week (my own fat bottom), and I emailed him that sometimes I wonder why I divorced him. The truth is that we both know the reasons, they had nothing to do with that, and a marriage between us still would not work. It doesn’t stop us from loving each other, though.

Here’s what I said:

Sometimes I wonder why I divorced you.  (And the answer partly is because I had created so much stress in my own mind about being with you… but it was being with me that needed some investigation.)

He queried:

“Being with me or being with you?”

Being with me, of course.

I can only ever have trouble being with someone else to the extent that I am not loving the part of myself they are reflecting. “But only always,” as Katie says.

I’m really going to have to do the School for the Work. I’d love to. I understand they do give some scholarships for it. I’d have to get there, too, which usually means flying to California. You know, I’d almost rather do that than go home for Christmas or my birthday. (So, I went and looked. The next one is in April 2007. If I can make it to Ireland, I can “probably” make it to California.)

Most of us have heard the New Age truism, “The world is my mirror.”

Most of us even say we believe it.

If that is true, then can you please explain to me why on Earth we would ever get mad at another person?

How could we?

Answer: We can’t!

This is an obvious, logical and true conclusion that stems from that fact. Now, I’ll admit that I understood to some degree that the world was my mirror even back in 1989 when I got married and all the way through 1995 when I got divorced and was in many ways still blaming my husband for things that were not working.

At least I made the decision from clarity. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

In fact, my current understanding is why a recent lover was able to say to me, “Thank you for not escalating when I told you I needed to be alone last night.”

Why would I? It didn’t mean anything about me.

Yes, he’s the same one who is having trouble with my fat bottom. So what? That doesn’t mean he is the cause of my upset about that. Not in the slightest. How could he be?

What? He’s supposed to ignore his preference for slimmer women?

Why? I don’t ignore mine for slim men.

Every single man I’ve ever dated, slept with or dreamed of is what the personal ads call HWP: height and weight proportional. Every one of them, bar none. So who am I kidding if I think a man doesn’t have the right to want that? Only myself, only myself.

If I have trouble being with someone who is fat, then I must first look to the plank in my own eye, as Jesus said, before trying to remove the mote from my brother’s eye. Well, yeah!

Katie’s most recent newsletter (www.thework.org) talks about a visit to a friend in the hospital who has cancer. She says something about her friend loving her cancer. I just tried to find that one and didn’t, but I found a blog on “Whose business are you in when you think that thought?” which is just as pertinent.

http://www.byronkatie.com/2006/09/whose_business_are_you_minding.htm

It’s short and sweet.

I spent 10 years in weekly therapy, groups and 12 Step programs over my internal thoughts and feelings about incest, how and whether it had affected me, what I thought of everybody else, especially my husband (yes, the one I was talking with above), and my father.

And do you know what I came up with?

*laughter*

Truly. I laugh. It’s funny to think that “they” did anything to me. That is one of the most absurd thoughts in the Universe. And we all think it all the time. I do, too.

When I am over there in your business, and you are in your business, who is here in my business?

And I wonder why sometimes my life doesn’t seem to be working?!

No one is minding the store.

Now.

Being with myself is simple and yet I forget, over and over and over.

For example, ask me how many other web pages and emails I have looked at in the course of writing just this blog, nevermind the whole book of Ann’s Tale?

How many do you think?

I don’t exactly know. I wasn’t in my business at the time and I wasn’t counting, but I’m thinking it has been in the range of more than a dozen.

Why?

Well, because I think if I think about how I could have been with myself… could I? Can we ever do, be or think anything other than what we did or were or thought? No. If you think we could have, please prove it to me. Go back and do it.

Right.

Now, when I lie to myself and think that I could have loved Marvin any more or been more forgiving or less angry or in less pain or less judgmental or any of those things, is that true?

Obviously not.

I could only do what I did. It’s very real to notice that. I did what I did. He did what he did. Hmph. Even that might not be true. I cannot go back and prove I was ever married to him. Oh sure, we can find a piece of paper in a courthouse somewhere that says I was Mrs. So-and-So, but that’s not proof.

Right now, in this moment, I seem to be sitting at my laptop telling you and me some stories about some thing that I imagine happened in some past that never really happened the way we think it did. How many versions of that past do you think I could find?

Answer: It depends on how many people I ask and how many versions each one of them has.

Well, we’re in the dozens and dozens right there.

See? There I go again!

Now whose business am I in? 

The business of dozens of dozens of imaginary people who have imaginary stories about a past that I imagine.

Well, maybe it will make for good fiction. And that seems to be what I am writing.

It’s kind of funny. NaNoWriMo has it right. Participants seem to want to know what they count as fiction. Their FAQ says, “If you think it’s fiction, so do we.” Good thing.

It’s all fiction.

Being with myself makes it so much easier to notice that.

I’ve been having a fabulous time writing these little fictions to you, my imaginary audience. For all I know, no one has ever read my blogs and no one ever will.

Just as well, you know. It’s fiction.

Love, Ann