dragonfly unsettled

Today I went up to the roof to talk on the phone. On the roof a dragonfly was flitting around a rooftop puddle. Winding from back to front, back and forth, never landing anywhere. I’ve been looking for the messages in life lately and I love to see them in animals as noted in my last post.

Dragonfly medicine beckons you to seek out the parts of your habits which need changing.

Dragonflies are a better metaphor for me than a monkey-mind. I think of monkeys as diligent, balanced and relaxed. So maybe its the words I've been telling myself. I've said don't have a monkey mind but I thought that wouldn't be a terrible thing. What I need to avoid is dragonfly habits.

I am like a dragonfly, flitting from one thing to the next, never landing for long on one thing and never resting. This is the habit I want to change.

Blue Jay fights a Bobcat

blah.

I’ve been riding a desk for 8 years. Maybe more, I’ve kind of blocked it out. There is now no denying that currently: This is My Career. Wow, what a scary thought. How does one shake oneself out of ruts like this?

Sometimes I’m not totally honest with myself and that contributes to these terrible ruts. Here is one example. I love the concept of totem animals. I believe the way you figure out your totem animal is to listen to yourself about which animals you are drawn to, which ones hold special meaning in your life and/or the ones that show up all the time either in life or dreams.

So for years I’ve thought my only totem is a bobcat/lynx.


Lynx people…have a tendency to be a know-it-all. It's important for all (including Lynx people) to realize that they do have the answers and the knowledge, it just might be hidden under the trappings of the ego or the desires of our emotional existence. Those with Lynx medicine are good at keeping secrets hidden, they are also excellent at giving advice to those who need to know when it is time for a secret to be revealed.

Bobcat people can see what is hidden -- and this ability
can make some people uncomfortable around a Bobcat person.


Bobcats…tend to feel resentful at having had to learn tough lessons on their own, and usually feel isolated. They are young with old souls.


But Snake and Blue Jay have been calling to me lately and when I looked up Blue Jay I recognized myself immediately. Bobcat may be my life totem and my guiding spirit but I have gotten sidetracked and I need this loud, obnoxious blue crow to pull me out of the muck.




“If Blue Jay is your totem, you may have tremendous abilities and potential, but you must learn not to be scattered and neglect to develop your abilities to their fullest. Blue Jay people can become dabblers – a little bit of knowledge about many things but master of none. Develop your gifts and you will have unlimited potential.”

A boisterous and bold blue jay lives in my backyard. It struts on the carport and flies at the windows startling the cats. It leaves me gifts of amazing blue-striped feathers and Sunday, a special gift of a half-blue opalescent half-gray dull one that woke me up to my own blindness. Thank you, Blue Jay.

Nail----->head

Ever heard of free will astrology? These are silly flighty fancy horoscopes which too often (for me) hit the nail on the head. I check it about once a month to avoid these kinds of reality checks. This week I did and here's the zinger: It's an excellent time for you to give more of your passion to fewer causes.

Wow.

and

Duh.

I have too many hobbies and I like ALL OF THEM but I have to stop. I am never going to accomplish ANYTHING that I want to accomplish if I don't stop having a monkey mind.

My brain flits from thing to thing, researching, exploring, investigating in an endless quest for ____ - WHAT? What the hell am I gathering all this information for? For someone? For Jeopardy? For all these books I am "going to" write but have no credentials for? Am I so nervous of appearing stupid that I am constantly gathering useless snippets of info on EVERYTHING so I never falter for one second in not having some semblance of an answer to everything? Am I truely facinated by the world and many aspects of it? The truth is probably some bastard child of these last two.

What I realized while reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" is that the people who are really really GOOD at something have been doing it A LOT for A LONG TIME. 10,ooo hours to be exact. They are experts. And since I can't go back and DO something for 10K hours (except I have probably read that much and I am pretty damn good at that) I have to start to really group my shots.

What are the areas in my life where I want to excel? What do I feel passionate enough about to begin working on it for a theoretical 10K hour marathon? I am calling more focus into my life starting right this moment. I want to be an expert (if only to myself).

Darrel, the IRS super

Yesterday I had my taxes done at the IRS. If you make >$49,000 per year, the IRS has to prepare your taxes for you. Even though this often takes an hour or more (wait time), I love the security of knowing the IRS prepared my taxes and cannot audit me or otherwise say they were done incorrectly. They did it.

I walked in about 2pm, there are over a dozen people waiting but the man at the counter says “whatchu got?” and takes all my tax papers. He has tightly curled black hair and red-brown skin with (oh, my favorite) dark brown freckles. Very dark brown, like little chocolate buttons. Probably in his early forties, dressed like a jazz musician from the 30’s, slightly taller than me, soft brown eyes.
“You just walked in here?” he asked. It seemed as if I was over-prepared.
“Yeah.” I say and he doesn’t give me a number to wait (although most of the people in the room have these). Slightly concerned that I have no number, I trusted my gut which was telling me this guy liked me and wanted to help.

After about twenty minutes, he calls me up with a few others to go to another room where someone is preparing taxes. He keeps calling me by my first name and has a very tender demeanor. I wait in this other room for about 45 minutes.

“Julia! Are you still here!?” He says when he sees me. I’ve been doodling. “Oh you’re an artist! Look at that.” What a sweet kind man, when the tax preparer has some problems itemizing my mortgage stuff, he comes over to help, he laughs at my secret-unclaimed-beach-house joke. She calls him Darrel. He tells her I am an artist and asks (in earnest) to see my doodle again. Thank you Darrel, the sunshine on my Tuesday tax ick.

The Crazy

Last night while lying in my vat of usual insomnia, I remembered the time when I worked for a brain-damaged psychologist. I was fresh from dropping out of college, confused, broke, living with my “best friend” Buzz who had convinced me I was a helpless idiot, dating a boy. It was a rough time and here was a seemingly together gentleman taking a chance on me. He gave me a job, paid me way more than I was accustomed to and helped me develop a skill set that helped me survive. Sure, he'd had an aneurism rupture and part of his brain removed, but he seemed ok.

But as I remembered the crazy things the good doctor made me do all in the name of the 9-5, I wished that I had kept a blog back then or a daily journal entry or something about the jist of what Crazy task I'd been given each day. As boring as it would’ve been to do, it would be nice to have a record of those things. And because I was so shut down at the time, the record would have been hilariously matter-of-fact. (example: Today I went through all E---'s possessions. These were shipped to me after he jumped off the Golden Gate bridge subsequently ending his 34-year existance. My task is to pick out the "pertinent items" for Dr.- to look over when he gets back. Having never met or even spoken to E--- I am not completely sure what the pertinent items are.)

But then when you’re enmeshed in The Crazy, its hard to see it for what it is. I probably wouldn't have known exactly what was Crazy and what was just work since I was so Crazy myself.

Starlings

Starlings are an accident in America, one man’s obsessive love of Shakespeare has overtaken the entire continent. Those of us who love songbirds and the wonderful colors and twitter of our indigenous birds know the bane that starlings can be. They clean out a birdfeeder in an hour, flocking and pecking and tossing seeds. The swarm stomps our delicate grass shoots to flat green paint splatter on the muddy ground.

As a lover of all living things, I’m shocked at my idea of buying a BB gun but there it is. I want to shoot the little bastards. I’m tired of this! I think they kicked my woodpecker out of her tree! They have this evil way of letting woodpeckers make a hole to live in and then flocking them into giving it up! Isn’t that awful? They deserve a good buckshot. Ugh. I say that but the first time I hit one, and it fluttered awfully to the ground, the self-loathing would be unbearable. Anyone know how to convince these greedy bastards to move on?

My neighbors are putting in a Purple Martin house and I fear it will be overtaken by starlings then I'll have a family of them next door. I want my woodpecker back! I love her cute little red-mohawk and infernal pecking at the birch in the front yard.

writing workshop

This weekend I took part in a critiquing workshop at the main branch of the Public Library.

The creator of the workshop sloppily foretold in emails what s/he was planning. Declan, an obscure male traditionally-Irish name, turns out to a be a young woman. She is probably in her early twenties and proactively decided to begin her own writing workshop to built her resume. I appreciate the gutsiness.

About 12 of us show up, as soon as I walk in I see my son's grandmother. The woman who served us with papers filing for full custody at the behest of her son, who took part in the brief time when we were denied access to our child until the courts rectified that. This all took place after a painful and unfortunate accident that left our son injured, a time when he needed his parents (all of them) the most. I was shocked, but being who I am it was easy to hide shock and I only said, "hello".

She didn't recognize me at first then, registering shock in her wide blue eyes, she stuttered "I'm so happy to see you here."

It was all I could do not to say "I'm so NOT HAPPY TO SEE YOU here." I felt invaded, scared, irritated, angry. Then, I took a deep breath, let her sentence hang in the air and said something non-descript like "what a surprise."

In typical steam-roller fashion, I had agreed to share one of my poems at the first meeting. I waffled, thought of reneging then just decided whatever the world has in store for me, it will out. So I guess I'll go back next week. I am thankful that such a program exists in this city for broke writers such as myself, even if it comes with unwanted lessons in forgiveness.