Essay: Heartset; There’s No One Left. I’m Alone. (Freebie)


It has finally happened after twenty years. I live alone in my house, no men, no noise, no demands for food or rides, this or that, “Mom can you help me!” “C’ mon, let’s go to the store”.

My son’s dad died nine years ago…the last time I saw him was Christmas Day. Five days later, he was gone. I barely eeked out a smile as I said goodbye. He had been pretty emotionally abusive to me, frustrated his whole life, not knowing he was high-functioning autistic savant until three months beforehand. My efforts at solace could not change his brain, but he was a music legend on the pile of my torn apart heart. In addition, my son did not see his father respect me; the fruits of patriarchy.

Three months later my fiance died. I had fifteen minutes notice. We loved each other and did everything for each other. It was not to be. He had not taken care of his body and it caught up with him.

Now four days ago, my nineteen-year-old son went out the door with his backpack and no notice to start his hero’s adventure quest which is his birthright. Good for him but he could have warned me! It reminded me of the sudden death of my fiance.

On his way out, of course, he was mad at me and said I was so selfish. I suppose because I take care of myself and being a female, that is unacceptable and taboo. I wonder if he thought of the effect of his words on me, skipping them like stones across the water? Doubtful at his age. I’ve been called selfish alot because I’m independent and have my own life that I share with a few people who don’t ask me to stop loving physics and time science just because I’m a girl.

But the men walk out quickly and don’t return I’ve learned, to the other side of this world…or town. It doesn’t matter. They’re not with me.

It is so peaceful in this house without a raucous male. Part of me has waited twenty years to take my body back from my partners and my son, and before that, a line of men, but not a long line.

Now I get an adventure quest; a fresh start, the second half of my life, a thriving business, a home, free to do whatever I want and a body with no risk of pregnancy. I haven’t given it all away.

It’s like this secret I have as a sixty two-year-old who no one would suspect and assumes in our youth-worshipping culture, female-sacrificing altars around every corner, that I’m all washed up. “Hasn’t that woman been laid flat yet? Well, why not?” (My mother keeps literally asking that as though she’s waiting for me to fall) “She’s Selfish!” they cry. With a capital “S” not a small “s”. There is the low self and the Higher Self. No. I just don’t believe in aging and atrophy. I don’t follow programming.

Truth is, I am my own best friend and for the first time in my life, I’m taking care of my body for me and no one else. More and more women are doing it. I’m not alone. We still have work to do and adventure quests to commence. Ridiculous isn’t it.

I feign an attitude and a bird ready to flip until my dying day…because I said so.

Molecules of Emotion: Health-The Network of Mind IN the Cells


steven-holl-shadow-art
Steven Holl-Shadow Art

Chapter 9 of “The Molecules of Emotion” gets juicy. Dr. Pert says, on page 185

The three classically separated areas of neuroscience, endocrinology, and immunology with their various organs-the brain; the glands; and the spleen, bone marrow, and lymph nodes are actually joined to each other in a multidirectional network of communication linked by information carriers known as neuropeptides.

“…it might make more sense to emphasize the perspective of psychology rather than of neuroscience, for the term psycho clearly conveys the study of mind, which encompasses but also goes beyond the study of the brain. I like to speculate that what the mind is, is the flow of information as it moves among the cells, organs, and systems of the body…the mind as we experience it is immaterial, yet it has physical substrate, which is both the body and the brain.”

Molecules of Emotion coverThe mind, then, is that which holds the network together, often acting below our consciousness, linking and coordinating the major systems and their organs and cells in an intelligently orchestrated symphony of life.  This view of the organism as an information network departs radically from the old Newtonian, mechanistic view where we saw the body in terms of energy and matter. But there is intelligence running things.  Intelligence in the form of information running all the systems and creating behavior.”

Creating behavior?  Now there is where I part ways with her.  My son, who is studying psychology believes our behavior is determined by chemicals in the brain. That makes him, and those who agree with him, materialists. Many people believe our behavior is pre-determined or determined, that there is no real choice or free-will.  Frankly, this seems to be the central debate as we are squarely in the high-tech age, moving from Newtonian materialism to Einstein quantum states where something we see only exists because we see it collectively.  It doesn’t exist in and of itself, by itself.

What do your intuition and experience tell you here?  How has your life unfolded?  My life has taught me that I create my reality and my body condition by the habitual feeling, beliefs, and thoughts that I run. So I check myself every day. It’s called mindfulness. While I am part of an agreed-upon collective mind field as I look out my office window at the snow-covered roofs, my individual perception, interpretation, feeling, and thought processes are chosen by me.  Am I kidding myself?  Am I just a puppet on a string? Or are we truly at choice?

It makes no sense to believe we’re puppets. Otherwise, our lives would all be the same and unfold in a gentrified fashion and have no meaning or differentiation. There is an observation! Many people’s live ARE gentrified because they are not acting on their power to choose; free will. It is possible to abrogate your rights in the universe and then your mind goes into default mode, programmed by your family, Facebook, and CNN and you are part of the herd mentality. There are a thousand ways to free yourself from that and uplift your mind. Follow your intuition.

While it’s true that in my personal life, death/change has been a constant around me, it’s not something I chose to happen; I’ve witnessed it happening to others first hand. The universe allowed it to occur around me for a reason or maybe I did. However, my individual choices are indeed the reason I find myself in my current situation. It’s all good.

My mind is run by my intuition 24/7 and always has been, for as long as I can remember. Personally, I feel like I live in a kaleidoscope. When others see static sameness, I see and feel minute details of an ever-changing landscape of colors, vibes, temperatures, shapes, dimensions, and souls coming and going. Even sitting still, I feel in my body that life around me on earth is a dance of changes in light and shadow and I interpret them as quickly as I can and respond.

Prose; Skin


pick a tomato

The shell of a turtle, a carapace, guards your continuance of electric water, straight to your brain, pulls your vibration down in by degrees.

Your skin like a husk full of ridges on corn smells sweet,

hard to pull off at the bottom, tassles so soft on my face, the smell of earth.

Your arm was warm and pleasant as the first tomato of summer in my hungry hand.

Let me bite into that luscious fruit, so sweet and tangy

 or a mango stream of juice down my chin.

I’m distracted, clement smells from your back

Why are so sweet yet so smart and severe?

No end to touch makes my breathing peaceful.

I feel happy…oh god I’m doomed.

Indeed, it only lasted one day and you ripped your skin from me again.

At least you can’t take the memory from me.

Words can never erase actions like skin can never cover feelings.

 

Essay; No Thank You. My Response to ~ Dina Leygerman, 2017 attitude about the Women’s March


Subscribe to continue reading

Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.