The Journal Deck: Entry One

"The rise of the Feminine is about all of us rising together to form a new paradigm.  How can you be more active in your community or globally to be a part of this movement."

Luck brought me a new deck, one, that like tarot or blackjack, has you choose your card and then deals your fate.  This deck, rather than being full of fortunes, instead gives a prompt.   A writing prompt.  One that asks you as a goddess, (the rebranded word for someone who's felt powerless and now knows their worth,) to reflect on your life and the society we live in.

This first prompt of mine was embarrassingly difficult.  I fight the patriarchy in my sleep and enjoy complaining about those who want us to teach them to be better, rather than doing their own research, and yet here I am not having done enough myself: I didn't know this phrase "the rise of the Feminine," so I turned to Google.

The first listing was this HuffPo article, explaining that the feminine energy lives in the second chakra, and is the source of emotions.  It details that living in this society, men and women are made to feel ashamed of feelings, resulting in suppression and even acting out.  It cites the #MeToo movement as part of the uproar bringing The Feminine to the forefront.  "Where vulnerability and honesty were once feared," the article says, "these feminine qualities are now seen as raw, honest, relatable, respected, and they give permission for people to be real with themselves about what’s actually there."  The rest of the article encourages the reader to share their truth without fear or shame, and to love themselves as they are.

This to me sounds like a pep-talk based on an uprising, but not the uprising itself.  So I did more digging.

Next, I found this passage on a goddess-y website called Purse for the People.  This article describes the phenomenon in question as "the Divine Feminine," something that I recognized turned me off just a little.  I've chosen to surround myself with skeptics of all kinds, enjoying their intellect, but struggling then to hold onto the spirituality I've discovered for the things that can be felt but not seen.  I have a scientific retort for everything I do, and reading the word "divine" made me uneasy.  How will I explain this? I thought to myself, delighted to find the answer within the article itself.

It bases this feminine movement as being rooted in ecology, utilizing Mother Earth as an archetype to create "a world view based in ecology, deep justice for all and an expanded global identity beyond national boundaries."  It cites technology as bringing society within a click of a button, making it easier than ever for us to choose between two oppositions: to conquer or to collaborate.  The author recalls instances where history conquered, quoting Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth.  He outlines the witch hunt by the Roman Catholic Church as "a dark chapter in human history," where the feminine was declared demonic, reducing women to child bearers and men's property.  He describes the impact as leaving our society imbalanced.

Now this I know.  I've discussed with friends recently that the best way to describe being looked at by strange man is to feel like prey.  We've connected over moments where we didn't know that saying "no" was an option.  Of course looking back, we knew it could result in further aggression, but in that moment it hadn't even occurred to us as a word that we could say.

I do hate being a woman in this society, which all things considered is a freer culture for women than many, many others.  And yet each day, I take into consideration what make up to wear when I am "unescorted," what sweater to bring to cover up my cleavage, which color hair makes me gain more respect or be met with more unwanted attention.  As a woman I am afraid, I am afraid always.  I can't sleep in anything but complete silence, because each nightly sound makes me wake up gasping for shelter.

So going back to the prompt, knowing now that the "the rise of the Feminine" is about bringing back power to women and "feminine" emotions after centuries of being seen as lesser, I ask myself how can I harness this fear into something powerful.  Like fearing an arrow, so crafting a bow to wield it.

Words, I know.  Words I can craft, maneuver, chisel, and slice.  I looked up how to make a sword, hoping to further the metaphor, but stopped when I read "first you have to figure out what you want your sword to look like."

That, I do not know yet.  So to answer the original prompt: I'm working on it.  I want to change this world, I want to make the lives of those I love and those I do not know easier, safer, more appealing.  I protect "the Feminine" by embracing it and sharing how it impacts my life, and soon I'll know how to I know how to make my sword, my stance; first, I just need to figure out what I want it to look like.

Here's the card from The Journal Deck by the wonderful Alyssa Kuzins.

Hope Will Swing Again

Our country was founded by jackass white men who raped women, owned slaves, and killed people to get what they wanted.  They didn’t listen to the British, they didn’t listen to the Indigenous people, they just came and conquered.  We see them as heroes because history is written by the victors, but more and more we are starting to embrace that they were ASSHOLES.

And yet (very small yet) they created documents that allowed for interpretation that have been pushed and changed and rewritten to be more inclusive and less racist/sexist/xenophobic.  Our country is still founded upon the beliefs of these often awful straight white males, but we have found ways to take it back.  We being the people who aren’t those who are privileged.  We being the people who aren’t rich, don’t have penises, and don’t conform to outdated standards.

This country operates as a pendulum.  The farther it swings one way, the harder it’ll swing the other.  Trump is a response to the first black president.  Kavanaugh is a response to Obama appointing two women to the Supreme Court, one of which as the first Justice of hispanic descent.  

So as much as this period in our country absolutely makes me disheartened, angry, and ashamed, I know that the pendulum will swing back.  We will have our time, and we will make it right.  And we will fight when the rebuttal happens again.  But we can’t let them win.  We will die, and we must do all that we can to make this country, this society, more decent than the one we were born into.  It was founded by hypocrites, but adopted by those who see more justice than they ever did.  And our goal should be to fight so hard for equality and others’ rights, that one day we are viewed as those who were outdated and blind.

It’ll be okay.  I am ashamed, but the pendulum will swing back.  And we will be ready.

Travel in 2017 vs. 2012

I recently traveled through Vietnam and a little piece of Hong Kong.  
The last time I left America was in 2012 when I studied in France for three months.  Almost immediately upon my arrival in Vietnam, I realized how different travel is, and how most of my tips had become outdated in just five years.

Technology is the biggest catalyst of change, and I’m curious about how much it shapes culture.  For instance, when I was in France and learning language, I was taught “internet café” geographically and linguistically very early on.

I did have a smart phone when I was in France, but it could do maybe half of what we expect from our phones today.  Moreover, it was a Verizon iPhone 4, which my Apple friends who’ve been with the company for a few years know didn’t have a SIM tray.  In other words, it was hardwired to only understand my carrier in the U.S. and basically an iPod.

I’d have to duck into previously mentioned internet cafés in order to do anything beyond downloaded music and photos.  I get lost very, very easily, and looking back I’m still in awe at how I got around without a little blue dot showing me walking in the wrong direction.

My travel was marked by these internet-happy spots, the equivalent of stopping for gas before driving to the next adventure.  When I changed between bus and train, I knew my stops to go check for messages from friends or directions from the satellite gods.

Fast forward to 2017.  I got a SIM card faster than they stamped my visa.  The Vietnamese government sponsors their cellphone carriers, and that’s partially responsible for how reasonably priced they are.  I inserted the new SIM card into my phone and was immediately joking with one of my friends. While there, my biggest obstacle in communication wasn’t the ability to connect, but simply timezones.  But as long as they were awake, I could speak to whomever I wanted, even from of on a mountain at the other side of the world.

Technology-lead, travel changed from this isolated bubble to being no different than exploring a city in America.  When I was in France, I spent my daily commute writing, listening to the same albums I had downloaded, and almost meditating in my bus seat, unable to communicate with friends or linguistically with those around me.

This was in Strasbourg.  Somedays I’d walk to Germany for lunch, and I don’t even know what that would’ve meant for cellphones.  I’m glad it never came up.  I wonder if the hole in access would’ve dissuaded me from traveling outside my comfort and reception zones.  Instead, it’s some of my fondest memories.

Honestly, I think travel should feel solitary.

I have a few friends that meet travel companions via Tinder.  A few years ago, one of my friends went on what we called her “Sexpodition,”

To be fair, I understand the utility of Tinder in another country.  When I was exploring Hong Kong by myself, I was tempted to use it to find a friend to go to dinner with.  I was blindly looking up places on Yelp, but would rather’ve had a new friend recommend a spot and talk to them about their culture.

And I couldn’t.  I couldn’t find someone available that night that wasn’t looking for sex.  I was not.  I was looking for human connection and I’ve found that is something so rare to find as a woman on those apps.  

And honestly, I don’t need it.  I build friendships rather easily.  I am connected on Facebook with people in Vietnam I knew for maybe an hour, and am grateful for the technology to still have them in my life; but I didn’t need it to meet them.

I even have a connection to someone I never met.  The hostel I stayed at in Hong Kong had these amazing postcards for sale.  They were a unique style illustratively, and when I inquired, the hostel staff excitedly told me that they’re all representative of Cantonese expressions.  I bought a set and asked if I could record one of them explaining their meanings.  She agreed as long as she could film me saying why it excited me so much.  She then sent that video along to the artist who made them, and she found me on Facebook saying how much it meant to her.

Connections are made from being observant and kind to the world around you.

I don’t need to find that superficially, and personally think the easy access of technology deflects my attention from my surroundings.

Some need to travel with those who speak English.  Evolutionarily, it is socially validating to be with someone who speaks the same language, as well as helps travel feel safer and more familiar.  I understand that, and traveled with an English speaker.  It’s my primary language, and see the utility.

But I love the struggle of other languages.  The dance to be understood that’s at the core of every human being.  Loving the linguistic challenge is why I learned French in three months.  It’s why I know ASL, it’s why I choose the friends that I have and what draws them to me.

I love the discomfort and humility that comes with traveling another country.

And in sum, have found technology lessens it.

The postcards.  Art by Bonnie Wong, featured at The Mahjong

Tea Leaf Telling

I read my tea leaves and saw a circle materialize. 

☁︎ It was a dusting of flowers, a momentary wreath pulled together by the winds of fate. And for a brief moment everything settled: it felt concentric and complete....

♠︎ only to then fan itself into two flowers. Strange ones, growing fully but downwards, as though the entire world were inverted, not uprooted, just reversed.   

☽ They then morphed into constellations, rotating rabidly and rapidly, morphing and twirling and shifting, all while maintaining their orbit around the same dirt from which the flowers had grown (or perhaps the dirt which grew from the flowers). 

❍ And then formed the final image: a mysterious and inviting hand; welcoming me into the madness. 

My Interpretation:

☁︎ I think this is a beautiful menagerie of what is to come. The chaos and magic, which paces and portends, settling gracefully into the ever changing. 

And I think I should commit myself to each phase. To enjoy the current feeling of completion and settlement, while anticipating it's incoming unsubtle shift.  

♠︎ And that perhaps my world may turn upside down, but to remember that it's still growing.  

☽ And to root myself to that growth, because the world will begin to whirl around me, but will not throw me.

And that is what I know. 

❍ I've been welcomed in; let's see where it takes me. 

The Most Important Post I'll Write for Awhile

I feel alone in this city, which is ironic as this is the most received I’ve ever felt.  People here don’t compare my passions to their own, feeling as if me loving something unusual to them somehow threatens their own passions.  Instead they very easily accept that what matters to me….matters to me, and more than that, they’re happy someone’s loving it. 

For instance, although hermit crabs are more common as pets on the east coast, fewer people here question how I could love Spencer as much as I do.  

In turn, this also makes change less terrifying.   Last week, for example, I started drawing with our store's iPad Pro, and suddenly coworkers and strangers asked if I was a visual artist; quickly I realized I was the only one laughing at the idea of that being true.

I had changed myself overnight and it was accepted effortlessly.  Back in college, you couldn't change your hair color without worrying about how it would be seen.  So it's odd to me, how in an environment so willing to see you as anything you so choose, that I still feel unhappy.

Perhaps it signals the end of me discovering myself: I found what I wanted and that’s who I am. And if having those choices validated doesn’t satisfy my craving for more, then I’m already onto the next item on the agenda.

When I was a kid I knew the type of person I wanted to be, and it seems I’ve finally grown into the shoes.

So that just leaves walking somewhere.

When  I visited Philly in April, almost a year after being away, I started crying when one of my friends/mentors noted how much I had grown; as much as I wanted that to be true, it was hard to believe. 

Life is monotonous here.  Every day looks the same, feels the same, so it’s only logical to feel like you’re the same, too.

But consider a rock at the edge of the sea, longing to be pulled into the magnificent chaos.  Every waves makes a promise as they come towards it, and every wave breaks its heart when they leave it behind.  It’s tortured in the monotony, with each little splash teasing it with the salty taste of adventure. 

And yet.

Each wave that brushes against it helps it glisten in the sun, tugging away at its imperfections, subtly chiseling it towards is truest form, where it’ll only bear the weight of what defines it the most.  And eventually the day will come when the final wave convinces the rock to let go of the final burden rooting it, and the rock will be carried back with the wave, towards adventure it longs for no longer.

So that’s my final business here.  I have to let go of the final piece keeping me here, so that I can move on to greater things.

And I know what it is, too.

I met a dog in our store the other day, and when I kneeled to pet him, he climbed onto my knees, lifted his front legs and hugged  me.  His owner commented that he likes me and that he’s such a loving dog; and how shocking it is that when she found him, he had been stabbed.

The pup had been recently groomed and when he walked away I could see the scars from his wounds.  And yet if his owner hadn’t told me, I never would’ve known.  That dog was more loving and more forgiving than most people.

A few days ago I tried to find a book I hadn’t finished.  My room is still in the pandemonium of moving five times in a year and no longer owning a bookcase, and so I couldn’t find the book.  But I found another I hadn’t finished and I tossed it into my bag instead.  I take so long to read that I continued where I had left off rather than restarting the book.  The book as a whole takes common children’s stories and breaks down what the symbolism means in adult psycology.  This particular chapter was about “the mistaken zygote,” a.k.a. The Ugly Duckling a.k.a. the trauma we face when we are abused as children and have to grow up too fast in the face of not receiving the unconditional love and care that we need in our developmental years.

I also have been watching The West Wing, and there was an episode where a character works with a psychologist who diagnoses him with PTSD.  The worst the doctor says to him are such: “What we need to get you to do is be able to remember the [traumatic event] without reliving it, and you have been reliving it.”

The book, Women Who Run with the Wolves, phrases it incredibly as well: 

“There is another issue to be dealt with.  Mistaken Zygotes learn to be survivors.  It is touch to spend years among those who cannot help you flourish.  Being able to say one is a survivor is an accomplishment…And yet there comes a time in the individuation process where the threat or trauma has significantly past.  Then is the time to go onto the next stage of survivorship, to healing and thriving.”

Now I’d be too nervous to say the threat has past, but I met a customer who understood quite a lot of this and confidently told me  I didn’t need a restraining order.      I’ve been here for a year and was only stalked once.  It triggers me, I’m still coping with the trauma, but I am safe.  Definitely safer than I was then.

The book continues: “One can take so much pride in being a survivor that it becomes a hazard to further creative development.”  For me, I think it’s that I went so many years on my own, people not knowing how hard my life was, before and after the abuse, that saying I survived validated the struggle I still felt I needed to prove.  

But,  “at some point, allying with it exclusively begins to inhibit new development…Liken it to a tough little plant that managed — without water, sunlight, nutrients — to sen out a brave and ornery leave anyway.  In spite of it all.  But thriving means, now that the bad times are behind, to put ourselves into occasions of the lush, the nutritive, the light, and there to flourish.”

That’s greater than “making survivorship the centerpiece of one’s life.”

That dog did it.  He is a creature made entirely of love, and still he was betrayed and almost killed by those he had chosen.  Miraculously he survived, but he didn’t remain in his abused state, bowing his head to those he feared would hurt him again.  He forgave and trusted and let go of the burdens rooting him to the shore — and now is as happy as he could be.

That’s my next step.  I didn’t just accidentally bump into all of these themes in the span of a week.  They’re the waves that have chosen to come towards me, highlighting that which I’m gripping to tightly, which in turn is gripping tightly onto me.  They splash me with the importance and safety of letting it go.  Ultimately, I’d rather say I’m happy than say I’m a survivor.  So if I can change myself overnight, tomorrow I will wake up in the direction of health, moving  a step closer towards being a thriving individual.

My Life is Changing

I’ve lost a lot since being sick, and have had a lot of time to think about what matters to me and why I’m still fighting.  It’s not art.  I thought it would be.  I thought that being in this city to pursue what I’ve been working towards my whole life would be the reward.  But it’s not.  I’m not finding student films to audition for, nor writing screenplays as I am on bedrest: Instead I’m dying to jump into someone’s arms.  To spend time with people that love me.  To make scarves and crafts for the people I love.  Anything to show them how much they matter to me.  People are everything, I’m realizing, and I’m willing to give up anything to be with them.  More than any career, I want people to love, and it’s terrifying to release myself from a goal that I’ve had for over a decade, but it’s also a relief to know what I really want.  And that’s a family.

So I’m not saying I’m going to go out and get pregnant and raise a bunch of spawn to feel loved, but rather I’m willing to make changes to my life to be with those that I still have left.  Because this has been some of the hardest months of my life (and I haven’t had the easiest of lives) and those that are still here, willing to hold my hand and listen to me as I cry, they are more important to me than any possible career.

I don’t exactly know what this means: I still only know how to express myself in writing and feel more connected to acting than anything I’ve ever found.  But I would rather have a life without artistic success but people that I love, than achieve success alone.

So we’ll see what the future brings.

Tomorrow I move to a new home, one that I never planned on having, without the people I thought I would live with.  So I’ll see how it fits into my future. In the meantime, I know  I am willing to do whatever it takes to keep in my life those that I love, though I don’t know yet what that means….or if that’s enough not to lose them.  But I have to hope it is.

So change is happening and change will continue to come.  But if it brings me closer to those that I love, then I have to love change, too.

image by Tobias Tovera

A Glance Through the Window into My World

Spring is Change and Change is Good

Some images (with their sources linked):