Vipassana

I wake at 5:30 or 6, pee, then sit on my cushion. Close my eyes and breathe, moving my attention closer and closer to my nostrils till that fills my consciousness, the sensation of air moving in, the sensation of air moving out. Totally focused in the immediate moment of the breath occurring.

After a bit I move from Anapana, meditation on breath, to vipassanna, moving meditation on body sensation.

Top of the head, observing the sensation in the small spot I seem to find, then moving the attention systematically around, and down over the face, through the structure of my head, down the neck to the shoulder, arm, hand, fingers top then bottoms one by one. Then the other arm.

Then the trunk of my body, breasts, under, stomach, upper pelvis, hips both internal and external, then down the right leg through the knee and top of the foot to each toe, like the fingers, top then bottom. And back up from the bottom of the toes, the sole of my foot, heel, back of the leg and across my root. Sensitive genitals, anus, nerves, to the other leg.

I work back up from my extremes through my back, neck, skull and find my crown chakra.

One cycle.

Goenkaji says 8 cycles an hour are common.

When I am in the groove, in the zone, I can cycle in minutes, but that is not the goal. Finding the smallest sensation, the most focus on the most minute sensation may be. But I can also hold my focus on the whole of my physical presence at once too.

The objective is to observe the sensations throughout the body without craving for the "good" sensation or aversion to the "bad" sensation. To observe sensation equanimously. The theory is based on the buddhist idea of dependent origin, every thing that happens is based on some prior happening. This is what results in karma. So by observation without attachment, you are effectively rewriting the karma from the good or bad reaction into an equanimous state.

One hour, I have a timer on my iphone that gently lets me know when I am done.

Usually I am in a large personal space, almost limitless and ever so quiet. Sometimes I stay for a bit.

Then a bit of metta, sending love from the power of that vast space and peace to others. Wanting them to have real peace, real happiness.

This is my daily practice.

Join me

:)

Here is where:  http://www.manda.dhamma.org/

It looks so plain, but inside people become aware of themselves in ways they didn't know they could. Men and women are segregated, 10 days of silence, no speaking, 11 hours a day of meditation. Hard. But also driven by your own desire, not by any pressure from the volunteers who facilitate it, feed and house you or teach the courses. Have you ever given yourself 10 days to be with yourself in an environment that lets you see yourself from your own true perspective? I did. I loved it. No longer the bipolar, and selfish bitch I once was....I hope. I am more quiet now.

love

Chloe.

Four Years, a Lifetime.

Four years ago today my mother died. It is like a lifetime ago even though I vividly remember the day, events and emotions. But the pain has faded.

Here is an excerpt from my book, Far Edge of Seventeen:

"     The day my mom died. Every one has seen it in the movies, someone dying, but its not like that. Its not noble or dramatic or sweet sadness, its ugly, uncontrollable, and is like something is ripped away from you with hidden power you didn't know existed. And I think it is like that for the person dying as well as those who were close to them.
     It was just another day, mom had been having a rough few weeks, she had lost weight and was in bed a lot, but she would have good days when she was up and eating and hanging around in the house, and bad days when she was in bed and didnt talk much. On those days it was like she wasnt really asleep and resting, but just sort of out of it, not making an effort to do anything. We knew she was getting worse, but I still hoped that she would fight her way out of it. But today she was really out of it. She was awake sometimes and would look at me and I would know she was seeing me, but no smile of recognition, no sign of her being able to rest from what she was fighting. Her breathing had gotten sort of hoarse and she looked tired and cold.
     In the early afternoon dad called her doctor, who came by the house and looked at her, and then talked to my dad for a while. After he left Dad called my brother and sister and told them to come to the house.
    By late afternoon is was obvious that something was wrong, she had not been at all really conscious and aware at all of her surroundings since morning. She seemed to be awake, but not really.
     We were all in the bedroom, Dad on the bed with her, sometimes gently saying things to her and stroking her hair. Shelly on a chair on dad's side, my brother on the foot of the bed and me on moms side. She wasnt awake and not asleep, but it was like she was dreaming, and figgiting. Her eyes would move around, looking, sometimes open, sometimes closed, but not recognizing anything we were. Then for a while she was relaxed and seemed asleep, breathing deeply and calm. We all relaxed and just hung out in the room. It was good to see her calm, she seemed to have been fighting so much. We snacked and dad had some classical music on, Bach, moms fav.
     Then she sort of woke with a couple of quick breaths and seemed to be reaching for my dad, who took hold of her, holding her to him. She seemed to be fighting, tense, but breathing slow and shallow, not really conscious, and then she wasnt breathing.
    And in the next moment, oh god, I knew that all the things I ever should have said to her, done for her, asked her, were lost  forever in a way I had never felt before. I suddenly realized what was now gone from my life. A gigantic hole, or more like a gigantic place where nothing could ever be again. Mom wasnt anymore. I'm crying now writing this, but not the way I was then, so deep and hopeless and lost.
     Dad layed with her sobbing, we were all sobbing. There was nothing else to do.  I layed on the bed next to her to and touched her hand for a moment, but SHE WASNT THERE. Oh god.

   It seemed like hours or maybe minutes, it was like a dream you couldn't wake up from, but Dad got up and called the doctor again and called the funeral home. An hour later a van came and they put her in a bag and took her out on a wheeled thing. Mom in a bag on a cart, except she wasnt mom anymore, just something to be taken away. I remember watching them push her through the living room and out the door, and hearing the van leave. I felt like I didnt know who I was or where I was. We all went to sleep later without eating."

Yea. I remember. like it was yesterday....

And still it seems as if it happened to a different person, a little girl floundering through her teenage years. Not me, now.

The pain is gone. Not that there are not those moments when my chest tightens and my eyes leak in her memory, but it is a good thing, something strong still left from her, the memory of her.

It amazes me how life moves on in little increments and one day we look back and see the vast change that just crept up.

I have a long way to go before I could be a mom, but just that I think about it means I am a different person. There will come a time when it is my turn to be there for someone else, with the lessons of my mom to guide me. Not yet, but someday.

Dad's up at the house on the coast this week where we left what was left of her, her ashes. They are in the sea and the winds up there. The more important parts of her we have are in our memories, and in how she effected us and influenced us into who we are today.

I'm beginning to understand ancestor worship, we ARE the culmination of a long line of the people before us. Not that I would literally worship any physical representation of my ancestors, but to think about it and try to honor what they went through to put me here....Yes.

I wish real peace and real joy to all.

:)

Chloe

Twenty One

Twenty One.

The final step into the rest of my life. They say (those wise invisible philosophers we love so much), that life is what happens while you are waiting for your dreams to come true. A valuable anti-koan to meditate on as a young person.

It marks the end of dreams, or at least the end of the excuse of youth for having to many. Sad.

Yet potentially invigorating! The knowledge that THIS IS IT. Its for real now in a way that it isn't before. It's all down hill from here, to cliche it up some more.

I was supposed to have finished my opus, my fictional 10 year literary autobiographical romp from ages 21 to 31, by the time I actually reached the age I was in it. It was ambitions I know, and great in concept. I was going to follow up my first book "Far Edge of Seventeen" with a projection of what my life would be from ages 21 to 31.

I was to write of the love I would find, the work, babies, sex and drama. My divorce, deaths and the theme of my life and of my dreams, finding myself again. Far Edge was about finding myself.

Maybe I can only really write when I am lost? That would be a good thing, as it means I am not so lost right now. Still no enduring love with a partner, no career, no babies and way too little sex! But that is a common dilemma. I look around and see me everywhere, grown girls still dreaming.

I am less concerned now than a couple years back about my life, and where it is going. Less motivated to direct it obsessively. More accepting of the sweet flow, and more accepting of the bitter snags. Meditation brings insight. And acceptance, and joy, stability, patience...

But it is here. My life. Staring me in the face in every aware moment. Do I listen the to minds worries? All the what ifs? Or just be so very present in it at every moment that there is no room for extraneous thought?

The latter.

My love to you...

A feeling very mature Chloe

♥

Devi UnBorn

My heart is opening 

As I move out of mind

Sitting for hours

Not feeling the time

My own universe

Still quiet vast

Unmoving yet whole

Feeling free at last

-Vipassana

          

Saffron nun from the future

Sometimes I fantasize about being a science fiction buddhist nun from the future...coming back in time to flit about, bodhisattva'ing around spreading my enlightenment.

Like I say, fantasize. I'm not enlightened. Sometimes I'm not even happy. Some creepo just blew up people in Boston, on a day when I was enjoying it being spring, and warm and things were okay.

So it's back to fantasy.

Here's how the future enlightened young woman dresses...

Sort of mimmicks the shaved head of a buddhist nun with the head covering and the colors complementing the saffron hues of Guatamas devotees.

I'd come back with a message of love and peace. A sort of why can't we just all chill and get along...but mixed with a presence and bearing of superior knowledge; enlightenment. You'd be able to see it in my eyes, so old and wise for someone so young, you'd know its true stuff.

Yea and maybe I'd bring back some technology that made it possible for people to live better with less struggle. Maybe electricity generated by a computer chip that just "tells" electrons to flow with out all the mechanical or nuclear stuff thats a problem now.

Then we could all be artists, or golfers or gamers, skateborders and steampunks...

And life would be about joy not struggle.

Yea. Thats it.

My fantasy on a day when I do NOT like reality.

Peace and love

Chloe.

Wow! Where did it go?

Where did it go?

My youth. No longer a teenager. Not sure if thats good or bad. Most of my teen years had a lot of bad in them. Rebellion. Against what? I had it good. Then worse and I grew up.

I want to be a little girl again, 8 or 9, apple of my mom and dads eyes, safe, innocent...

You can't go home again. Its not there anymore. And at this age I don't know where it will be. Still time for adventure, still hope and dreams, yet rootless and a little lost.

There's a lot I'd like to do. I still want to live in Paris forever and be young, and write. And love. Elusive love.

Love could be home. Safe and warm and the thing all decisions are based on. Nope.

I'm being a bipolar bitch today. Shouldn't be writing, all my stuff will come out and you don't want to see that! Yuck.

So I'll tell you about dinner. Going to "Bottega". Michael is a bit smarmy, but the food!

Gonna have:

Antipasti

Wood Grilled Octopus olive oil braised potatoes, pickled red onion and salsa verde

Pasti

Potato Dough Raviolo filled with spinach and ricotta, black truffles, farm fresh egg yolk, sage brown butter

Secondi

Duck Three Ways roasted breast, confit leg, duck liver mousse, Sierra Beauty apple passata, spiced hazelnuts, and watercress

Contorni

Truffle-parmigiano fries

And gonna sneak copious amount of wine. Get stinking. In the mood for it. NOT driving. (Learned THAT lesson..)

One more year and I can seriously pursue the writers curse, alcoholism. Not yet. Only 20.

Thinking of wohooing too. Maybe even get up on the table and embarassing everyone. (ya gots to do rad shit for posterity). But then posterity is only 9 days, cause the world ends soon. Damn Mayans. Bad planning if you ask me.

What would you do if you knew there were no consequences? Stuff you would be thought insane for if there were? Or just live out your life in the quiet desparation most of our lives are too full of.

Tomorrows headline "Underage drinker causes near riot at local restaurant" I guess I took my bra off too and slung it at some old dude whose wife was giving me evil looks..and grabbed the hot waiter and tried to make love to him then and there! While ordering a bottle of 1998 Krug Brut Blanc De Blancs Clos Du Mesnil...

Naughty Monkey me!

Yea.

See 20 years old and I still got it.

Imagination.

Hope I don't get stuck in it though...gotta keep at least one manicured fingernail clawed onto reality.

:)

.

Thanks

Thanks.

Thanksgiving made me think a bit and realize we have a choice, either thankful or resentful in life. It either happens TO us or or it happens FOR us. I'll have the thankful, it happens for us attitude please.

What do I have to be thankful for? My family first and most, and sitting to dinner with them, even without mom was an hour of grace.

My sister Michelle (Shelly) has a little one now and she is too frazzeled to host, Derek is a guy, and Grandma and Grandpa are too old. I didn't want to lose the tradition though so I cooked. Scary, nerve wracking and tiring, but I did it!

It used to alternate between us, mom cooking and the grandparents, and maybe the odd year with some aunts and uncles, but now its just us. I didn't get too fancy, but bought a "natural" turkey, brined it in a garbage bag with fresh herbs, and did the normal mashed potatos, stuffing, yams and a green veggie. This year the green veggie was brussel sprouts cut in half and sauteed in bacon fat with onions and garlic.

It took me three days to shop, chop and cook and was over in an hour, but everyone got up and cleaned and I got to just chill and be thanked. I could almost cry from the feeling of having feed everyone and see how much they enjoyed it! Well actually I did a little but didn't let anyone see, don't want them to think I'm unstable!  :)   (little inside joke for those who know me)

But really it wasn't just the food, but the occasion and the people gathered together that made it so special. Families forget each other, take each other for granted, and don't realize how each of us are part of the foundation for the lives of the others.

I've got a good foundation.

Thanks (to whom? God? my family? cosmic consciousness? Whatever, just thanks)

:)

Drunken Conversations

I had a short chat last night with a guy who I used to have a crush on when I was younger. It was apparent after a couple of lines that he was pretty drunk. I had had a couple glasses of wine myself and we said stuff that we may regret in the morning.

HE: i really need your help... please 

Me: Yes? how what?

HE: Well honestly im super horny... could you help?:)

Now here is where a girl has to make a choice; do I want to be a girl that guys can just say that too? Do I want to play along and risk making a fool of myself? Do I really want to see inside the psyche of a drunk boy/man?

I played along a bit until it was apparent that he wasn't capable of playing the sort of mind game that a good chat is, teasing, innuendo, bold moves and good observation of where the other person is at in their mind. He was too drunk and didn't follow the leads I gave him to some hot chat sex.

I think part of it is that I am a word person and he is a person who comes across better in person. I love to play with words, use them on people. If he and I were in the same mood and physically in the same location, I bet he could have just looked in my eyes and I would have felt his need and been aroused myself. Shit I felt his need through his sparse, marginally coherent, one line chat responses!

But I'm a girl and I need more foreplay, words that tease with subtle meanings and suggestions, words that move feelings and memories around in my mind, I need to be feeling something too.

All I was feeling was tipsy and silly, although I did try to use my words to get him going;

Me: I'll be in my bedroom....I'll find something sexy to wear, maybe some transparent panties and some lip gloss? That do it for you?

Now to me that is a pretty obvious invitation to some hot chat! But he didn't really step up, but just replied

HE:  What else would you do for me 

• Me: A bottle of tequila and a sleeping bag out on the hill somewhere that looks over the valley and two people telling each other their shit...now thats real.
• Your drunk now xxxx. Just jack off and go to sleep. 
  
  
  HE: No,,,,I want you now!
  
  
  Me: And xxx, I want you to write me in the morning and tell me all about it! Tell me what you imagined and how good it felt and all that!
  
  
  HE:  What?
  • What do you mean?

Me? Whacha gonna do for me babe? He's not a word play guy. If I was him and wanted to play back, I would have said some thing like "oh yea! and I'll kiss that lip gloss off you and then your panties too!" Or "I'll come into your room with a feather to tease you, a body to please you and my passion to feed yours".

I know, I expect a lot. Thing is he's a great guy, nice, fun, decent. But still at that guy stage where he thinks too much with his dick. And there are times when a girl wants a drunk, physical, horny guy who doesn't have much to say or any claim on you. But it has to be inperson. Not in a chat!

I did what I had to do, and had a nice sleep. I hope he did too...  :)

Ah School...

Back in the grind, autumn in full glorious last stages of leftover summer before the cool winds and rustling leaves come blowing by reminding of how life moves on never stays the same.

Run on sentences feel so good, stream of consciousness, alive and loving it in the face of the hideous oppression of structured writing to meet the dry expectations of grad student TA's whose only desire is the professors approving eye, a beer or ten, and a new crop of young women/girls to prey on.

Yea I'd fuck for a grade if I had to, but I don't, even though there are a couple of guys I wish would ask, as if guys ask instead of passive aggessivly maneuver and scheme, just ask guys, have some balls and say it, "I want your ass".

I'd have more respect if it was done direct and left alone if rejected, but then where's the fun in that? Too simple.

I need to write 4000 cogent words on mid seventeenth century literatures beginings, lots of poets, not too much in the way of what we now think of as literature, the novel and all.

What dire offence from am'rous causes springs, 
What mighty contests rise from trivial things, 
I sing — This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due: 
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view: 
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If She inspire, and He approve my lays. 

Yea right, its work to read, maybe my attitude needs adjustment, a few beers would do the trick, but spend months on my hips too, wine perhaps in baccannal spirit, or harlots gin, and strip naked at Dr Andy's poetry night and read "Rape of the Lock" with my most drunken slur!

Wa dir oofeens frum amrus cusses srpoings...

And fall down to the applause, a performance piece macabre.

http://poetryindavis.com/ ?? should I?  I probably won't, but sit mouse quiet in the back row and fantasize about having the courage to walk up front and do anything at all! Men are not the only ones living lives of quiet desparation, internal fantasy the only love known, unseen, not recognized for who you are, but just a blob of flesh, not even acceptably shaped.

Ah well. I have not lost hope. There IS joy in me, and things wanting to get out. This was some of it.

Luv ya.

I saw her walking ahead of me

I saw her walking ahead of me in the Châtelet – Les Halles metro station, long legs, an Italian silk summer dress with a salmon and tea green print and some impossible heels the seemed too small to fit any woman's feet, but held hers like the hands of a foot fetish near orgasm.

I claim I'm not lesbian but the girl lust rose in me watching the sway of her hips and the long cool stride, the flow of her hair in the slight breeze of the metros ventilation, and the absolute confidence she had.

I imagined the silk she must be wearing under her silk, those kind of panties that are not at all tight, yet fit so close, feeling like air on the skin.

I had seen her before and smiled at her. She looked at me with a pleasant confusion, a concession to me in sometimes aloof Paris. My heart skipped a beat, or three.

Is she a model out shopping, I wondered, or a very expensive prostitue? More likely a beautiful accessory of the wealthy circles. A protected woman out in the edges of the real world where girls don't look like visions, money is a worry and life is not assured to be comfortable.

Long legs the opposite of short chubby me, with my rapidly locking dreads, and nouveau retro hippy blouses and skirts. I've figured out that I will never be long legged, slim and impeccable. Maybe more because I don't want to be. I do though, notice those who are.

A man a few days ago, a suit cut by scissors longing to make love to his body, hair kissed by the air, not fussy, no product! Ick. A gym member who doesn't flaunt it, not too tall and he smiled at the coffee lady as he collected his morning jolt and pasterie in front of me. I could have eaten him for dinner and had leftovers for breakfast!

So different from how I present myself, so different from how I want to be seen, and still so fascinating.

About 2 weeks into my adventure I decided to do dreads. I can't compete with french women at their look, so I went all Berkley, peasant blouses, short sheath skirts, sandals and me, pushing out the seams. So much for scarves and style. Its a look, suits me, and sets me apart. 

They seem to understand when they hear my American accent...  :)

"bonjour, je suis Chloé........... Oui... de californie"

So did I follow her, or him, like a puppy wanting attention? Yea a little. She noticed, he didn't.

I'll see her again.

I'm moving in with a man!

     Schools out. Yeah! But the bigger news is that I am moving into an apartment with a man! First time for me!

     Little twist to it though, he's 73.

    Remember I posted a while ago that I wanted to go back to France this summer? Well its on! I called some friends there and asked how I could go about getting myself a writers garrett and how much it would cost in Paris, and it turns out that it is ridiculous! Pretty much anything on the short term was over €1,500 a month. Thats $2000ish. And that is for a studio/room in a not so good neighborhood.

     That would be stupid, worth it, but irresponsible. My budget is €3000 for everything, the whole summer ($3800). I've got an $1400 round trip flight, on Finnair via Helsinki! And heres the beauty, my friends know a man who has a 2 room apartment in the 14º Arrondissement where Hemingway, Henry Miller, Fitzgerald, TS Elliot, Alice B Tolkas and Gertrude Stein famously lived and wrote!!

55 Rue Boulard, food vendors across the street in the park a couple times a week!

     €350 a month (X 2.5 months) for a nice safe quiet room and full use of the apartment!!! I'm going to cook myself, no money for eating out, but what I really want to do is discipline myself to write at a set time and for a certain number of hours or words each day.

    For fun, I get to walk around Paris! I'll probably get a Metro pass too, but thats about it for spending. Food, Wine, and shelter and being in Paris should be a plenty rich experience.

    My landlord/roomate is a fairly recent widower, so we have something in common, but comes highly recommended. He was a civil engineer and has lived in many different places, Morocco for a while and Algeria, and Tahiti. He speaks English too and is in good health and people say he is fairly mellow and will enjoy my company. I plan on getting him talking and maybe I can use some of his life in future characters.

     My Grandma is worried he will hit on me, and that I will certainly get robbed if not raped if I am out in public after about 4pm, but those are risks that I take in San Francisco too. Well maybe not men hitting on me!! Secretly I sometimes even encourage that! And imagine a grandpa aged man hitting on me?!!? Actually I can! What I would like to experience is it done so well that I would consider it. I wonder if age and experience really can win over youth and vigor? Don't worry, I'm not going to encourage it there! But the thought of it...could be a novel? What was that old movie with the kid and the old woman? Wouldn't it be nice if relationships were primarily something other than a good match of physical attractiveness? (Note to Greta: something to explore).

     I don't even know the man yet and her I go off imagining! Could be too that he is grumpy and doesn't like the sound of my fingers on keys for hours! I'll have to be Chloe the mouse and scuttle around tying to be inoffensive! Imagine! Me inoffensive? Ms Blunt who laughs like a horse!

     So...I leave July 4th. Probably return mid September for school. Or maybe never be heard from again, vanishing into the world at large, so far from where I am known. Nah, gotta a book to write! Maybe this time even published by someone other than myself!!

Love

♥♥♥

Telepathic rainbow unicorn named Clancy who serves me, and a male panther who shapeshifts into my occasional lover but has no name.

On a Facebook group, Vicki Ableson's Women Who Write ,http://www.facebook.com/groups/134766656603628/ Linda Sands, a woman who writes among other things, Linda-sands.com, asked for 10 people to answer 10 question in 10 words or less....fun stuff so I did!


http://linda-sands.com/authors/the-quick-fire-june-another-challenge-or-more-words-from-writers


 Then, inspired by my last answer, wrote a little bedtime story for my kids, (hopefully it will be useful if I ever fall in love, have kids and remember where I filed it!)(Or get knocked up, abandoned by the guy and need something to swat the flys away from my brats in the single wide in Barstow)



Clancy was a unicorn. A rainbow unicorn. And he was telepathic too!

He started out at as a MyLittlePony toy of a little girl named Chloe, and grew with her feeding off her love, and her thoughts, until he was big.

Now he was 15 hands tall, bigger than any unicorn, in fact he was the size of a Horse!

Clancy glowed in colors, and not just one color at a time, but all the colors of the rainbow! And all at once too!

Of course only Chloe could see him. He was specially for her. He helped her.

If Chloe was sad, her trilled in the special voice that unicorns have, and pushed his colorful glow out of him as strong as he could! That alway made Chloe happy!

And when Chloe was happy, Oh My! Clancy ate up the happiness coming out of her and grew stronger and bigger and even brighter!

Chloe was happy a lot, so Clancy was big and bright!

Clancy had a special power too, that he only shared with Chloe, he could tell what other people were thinking. He used this power to help and protect Chloe.

When she was at school, Clancy could tell if there were any mean people around who might bully her. And if there were especially nice people around, he would make sure that Chloe met them and became friends.

Chloe had another special friend, but he didn’t have a name. He was a big cat, a black panther! He was scary to Clancy, because he had teeth! And eyes that stared without smiling too much. He looked like something that could eat a unicorn for breakfast!

The panther had a special power too. He could change shapes into a person for a short time. When Chloe was a little girl the panther would change shapes into a little boy sometimes and chase her and try to tickle her. Clancy didn’t like that! But Chloe did even though she pretended not to.

He couldn’t stay a person for too long though, so he usually was skulking around in the shadows where Clancy couldn’t see him.

Now that Chloe was grown up, the panther would still follow her, and sometimes he would leap out at her with the claws out and his teeth bared, and then at the very last moment, he would change into a handsome young man, and he would kiss Chloe.

Chloe still pretended not to like this, but Clancy could tell with his special powers that she really did. It still made Clancy uneasy though.

One day when Chloe went on a nice bicycle ride in the country, with Clancy trotting along behind and the panther sneaking from bush to bush waiting to pounce, a bad wizard and his minions jumped out from behind a tree, knocked Chloe off her bike, through a net over the panther and lassoed Clancy!

The pulled Clancy into a horse trailer and sped off before Chloe could get up and before the panther could bite his way out of the net!

Chloe was not hurt but she was so very angry and very very sad too. Clancy was her friend from when she was little and she knew the wizard would not be nice to him, and maybe even try to make him do bad things!

The Panther saw how sad Chloe was and he was angry too, so he shifted into his man shape, jumped on Chloe’s bike, told her to sit on the handle bars, and using all his strength, peddled so fast that they caught up with the wizard at the stop sign at the end of the road!

The wizard jumped out of the truck towing the trailer with Clancy in it and laughed at the young man and Chloe on the bicycle.

“Maybe you can catch me”, said the wizard, “but there is nothing a young man and a silly young woman can do to stop me!”

Just then the panther changed back into his panther shape, leaped onto the wizard and ate him!

Chloe set Clancy free and the wizard’s bad helpers all ran away in fear.

Clancy was so happy! And now he was no longer afraid of the panther either! He knew that the panther was his friend too!

So the three friends, Clancy, the Panther and Chloe went home to have some cookies and milk, some panther food and some nice fresh grass.

Now, and ever since the panther ate the wizard, when the panther burps, sparkles come out his mouth, even when he is in his human shape.

So if you see a cute young woman named Chloe, talking to someone named Clancy that you can not see, and waving her hand around in front of her face like she is trying to make sparkles go away, you will know the three friends are living happily ever after!

The End.

:)

Taking a peek at what should remain unseen..

I'm not a normal girl, I think.  (semi-colon? or comma?)

I think sometimes I am sitting on the edge of a precipice, that is the edge of the heights of sanity, with my feet dangling over the edge and my butt slipping and sliding precariously, while I hum a carefree little tune in my head and dream of things I want but do not create.

Below, a bottomless void of unknown, without features, with nothing that could be grasped to give reference much less support. That must be what insanity is, loosing all reference. Not just right and wrong, but reference to the shared experience of life. Culture, friendship and even more basic reference to the physical features of the world around. With out reference it would all be dream, or worse hallucination with no meaning.

I think some people never even realize the void is there. They are normal. Life is almost automatic for them, their thinking done for them by the culture they live in, by the also automatic decisions their peers make, and by the random coincidental stuff that seems to be a grand conspiracy by the overlords, illuminati and republicans.

I can't be normal, and don't want to be, but I dream of it. How easy it would be! How wonderful to live without knowing the void. Without having to face sanity knowing it is not the only choice.

There is danger in knowledge. Like the popular theme these days from "The Secret" and that whole line of thinking; you get what you put your attention on, manifest your dreams. Mini empires are built on telling people that too. I wonder what motivation is behind pulling back that curtain? Housewives wishing for new cars and an attentive husband, but opening the pandoras box of knowledge, knowing they can envision something, and if the vision is held, it starts to turn to reality. Are normal people safe with that? Or will human failings slip through that open door and petty jealousy's and minor slights motivate evil's growth?

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Whoa. Dark. I better get myself a vente mocha latte, make sure my facebook is up to date and get to school! Or they'll throw a net over me and put me on a watch!

(Just being creative Greta, no worries...  ♥ )

Serious shit!

OK. You can't take shit too serious! (Chloe says in her best Jenna Marbles voice, with a quirky grin).

Yea. Fucking right!

Why?   'Cause, thats why. Just because you have a vagina doesn't mean you have to take shit all serious!

Read more about her..

Jenna Marbles in LA Weekly!

I'd like to be more like her, except she HAS a boyfriend and can say all the stuff she does because it doesn't matter to her!  But she says stuff that I can relate to! And she makes a living posting on youtube!

I don't say fuck as much as her and I don't think that would help me either! The guys that are impressed with that are all busy masturbating to her anyway. But what I would like is her seeming detachment from the whole social/cultural mess we live in. Maybe its just that she can observe it in others even though her life is stuck in the goo of human intercourse like the rest of us.

Humour seems to come from seeing things a little different. She makes her observations with an innocence that lets her get away with crudities and low production values, and seem natural and girl-wise.

Maybe thats what I want, to be girl-wise. Innocent, funny, cute, and smart in a non-threatening-to-evolving-males kind of way..

Yea.

♥

Alone on Sat. night

Its Saturday night and I'm alone.

Yea loser me.

But I have to look at it realisticly, I am the one who decides that when some guy acts like maybe he wants to talk to me, I look like I don't want to be talked to. Guys have fragile egos. Women are rejected all the time, you know, some guy looks at you for a second, and your self esteem gets ready to go up, and bam, he looks away like he didn't even see you, but you know its your weight/boobs/hair/ or worse, face.

We're used to it, but I think then we deal with it by being hard to get, or hard to get at, haughty, whatever. And lose out.

Guys are used to people, women people, listening to them if they act like they are going to say something. Guys don't notice when a woman person is acting like she wants to say something! Unless of course she has great boobs/face/sexual reputation!

ARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!

So rather than getting out there ever optimistic, playing the game, here I am, facebook a dry well, TV too insipid to tolerate, and my own failings turning into pixels for the world to see. Invisible Chole, I feel like I could walk naked down a busy street and no one would see me.

Of course someone would, and it would be some total loser guy, too drunk to talk, too drunk to fuck, and too drunk to respect.

In other words, sort of like me.

Ah pity, sweet wine.

:)

This summer, changepoint

     I've decided. This summer I'm going back to Europe and its OK if I don't come back in the fall. Fuck school. Sure school's great, there are some inspiring people trying to excite young minds, but they are doing it in a system that is also trying to form young minds into the robots of commerce of the future.

    They worry so much about our "careers" and "job opportunity", and that we have the skills to succeed that they lose track of our process of learning, exploring and maturing. "School" is an assembly line to mediocrity, in a factory making people that fit in.

     You may think, "WHat!! what about occupy and protests and activisism and pepper spray!" I would say to you "what do those outlier events really mean? Are they the start of a whole way of life? Or just a bit of rebellion before the mortgage, family and faded dreams?" For some they will be a way of life, but consider; life lived trying to change others is of less ultimate influence than a life lived in your own unique and satisfying way, that broadens the scope of possiblilty and acceptability for others.

     School should celebrate people who head off in new directions, pushing the envelope of life, in thought, in action, in lifestyle. It should not celebrate people acting like sheep, sitting to be peppersprayed in media events that try to affect change with negative means. Sure there is cause for revolution, but using force, even passive/aggressive force is not required here and now. Go out and live and create the world in the vision you have, rather than try to tear down your parents version.

     So, I may not go back to school.

     My writing is slow, too many distractions, and there is something about being is such familiar circumstances that sucks the inspiration out into the hazey california sky and makes me lazy.

     I'm thinking renting a room in Paris, the writers garrett, and disappearing into my head for a time. Maybe if I can come up with some way of leaving my credit cards at home and living off a pittance, it will force me to spend time getting all these ideas, dreams and stories out of my head and onto paper.

     Paper! Pixels really!

     Last time I was in Paris I almost fell in love. Maybe I will meet someone and my life will turn on that and I will end up living there, raising a family, and leaving behind the wonderful comfort of being an affluent california girl, with all its materialistic temptations.

     I've promised myself that if I get 50,000 words done, I will reward myself with a week in Greece, on the beach, sunburning my boobs like I did last year!

     Ha!

Soft power, quiet certainty

My dad got back from India last night! Hurray! I was missing him so much! (No silly thats Ramana, not Daddy! But he has that same look!)

I went to SFO and picked him up and drove him home in the rain. He said he wasn't sure if he even remembered how to drive! It was raining so hard all the way there and back. It was scary, driving in the dark and all the weekend traffic and the clouds of spray coming up from all the other cars, but I was so careful and concentrated real hard. I had precious cargo!

Its a funny feeling to be responsible for someone elses life like that, driving in bad conditions, knowing that if you screwed up, it could be bad. I saw like 10 ambulances with their lights flashing rushing to accidents too, and passed one where a car was turned facing traffic in the fast lane with a terrified woman being comforted by her man standing next to it waiting for someone to stop the traffic and rescue them. I am most cried seeing it! Well actually I did! They were standing on the thin little strip between the fast lane and the divider holding each other tight...

But we made it home safe, and I had a fire laid and even though Dad must have been tired he was excited and happy and we stayed up till after midnight talking.

We killed a bottle of Cab and he told me all about his trip. Well probably not all about it, but the highlights. He started with a Vipanassa retreat in Dharamsala which is in Northern India and real close to Pakistan =0 and when that was done, he did a touristy thing to some of the parks and conservation areas that they have along the base of the Himalayas.

Then he went into Nepal and climbed Everest....Just kidding! He just visited Katmandu and then went and stayed in local type places in smaller towns for a while. He says he meditated every morning and every evening the whole time, and sometimes even with other people he met.

After Nepal he went back down into India and visited the holy city of Varanasi, which is full of temples and is on the Ganges, and then to New Delhi for a week and back home from there. He said the flight home was full of people who work in San Jose in computers!

He's different, he's like real calm but sort of like more alive too. He used to be quiet and calm and steady and happy too, but its like he has his same calm but with a sort of excited ness about it too. Kinda like there is a bigger smile behind the calm. Not that he doesnt smile! He always smiles, but now its like there is a youngerness to it.

I'm so happy for him! I was worried he might get depressed like I do, with missing Mom and all, but he really never went there. Thats good too, 'cause I don't know what I'd do if he did!

I made waffles this morning, my favorite thing in the world for a sunday morning, and later I'm going to make him go to whole foods with me and reintroduce him to American culture! He says it will be fun!

Taking my Dad on a date to the grocery store, Oh Yea!

You don't realize how much you miss someone sometimes until their back!

:)

New Year, new me

Its a new year and a new me. I am older, and not just chronologically. I had a wild ride over the last several years, and a pretty manic year through last summer and early fall, and then the fall. The inevitable fall that us bipolar types always deny is our destiny.

Lucky me I don't fall hard from my manic heights, I just go flat for a while. No great depression, no dramatic trips to the emergency room with crys for help expressed as destructive acts. I just retreat, fall silent, curl up with myself and live less vividly.

Of course this post may represent the start of a new manic phase, but my insight into myself is growing and  I have a degree of detachment that allows me perspective. I am growing up, maturing as a human. It feels good!

Yeah.

I am a woman now, not the little girl of last year. Both metaphorically and physically. An allusion I need not expand upon, knowing the intelligence of my readers. But lets just say it was the right time and the right man.

Wise, gentle, and not hung up in the significance and the need for clinging after events. A person whom a partnership with would be out of the question and a friendship with is certain. Older, much more experienced and still playful like the childwoman I was.

:)

I had been so hung up on it being perfect, with some very rigid ideas of what would be perfection. Ideas that seem silly now, and complicating. Confusing love and sex.

I'm amused at myself looking back at how I thought about things and how it turns out as I live my life. I think there is a lesson there in the value of letting go of expectations in favor of simpler goals, less defined by the specifics and more by the arrival somewhere good.

I have arrived, yet the goal is not an end but just a point marked on a larger quest. Larger Quest, that sure sounds pretentious!!

So New Year and new me, settling into myself as a changable vehicle for living. I've gotten back into the habit of meditation and this grounds me some, although I like being manic, I like living large and wild and then the calmer periods. The cycles are a good thing not a disability.

Love you all! ♥




PS: Buy my book!

http://www.amazon.com/Far-Edge-Seventeen-Chloe-Smith/dp/1467965472/

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I'm not a lesbian!

I'm not a lesbian. Some people have gotten that idea from some stuff I wrote and from knowing other stuff about me, but no, its not so.

Sorry. I know it would be fun if I were. What delicious scandal and gossip material! And easy solution to the relationship problem for me.

Not that I haven't wondered my self if I were. I have had feelings, but when it comes down to who I want to spend my life with, its gonna be someone with the differences that make things so exciting. The unknown of how a man feels and thinks, the texture and tight mass of the male body, and yes even the smells, the wandering attention and danger.

I know there are people who don't want me to talk about this, will feel hurt that I do, because of their own insecurities, their past relationships with me, and the loss when that ended, and the pure fear of their own feelings, but I AM bi.

So deal with it!

:)

Side stories

I learned a new writing technique today, a friend told me about it; side stories.

Say you are working on a character and get stuck. You don't know how to move them through the situation you are in with them. White screen stares in your face saying you will never be a writer!! OMG!

Well you just open a new window and take your character on a side story! Say your character is a church going family man who never even thinks a bad thing, well, write him hiring an escort and killing a pedestrian drunk driving as a side story. Just make shit up! Outrageous ridiculous stuff that never would see the light of its ink on paper.

Side story. It gets the creative stuff moving again and no one has to see.

Funny idea, sort of like life and that old saying, life is what happens to you while you are waiting for your dreams to come true. Like me waiting for Mr wow to seduce me, or well you get the pathetic idea!

Life has side stories, stuff that doesn't fit in the grand scheme, but is there anyway, little diversions, hidden embarrassments, petty crimes, and sometimes big ones. I'm not in the mood to tell mine, but maybe tonight I will dream of being the escort in my characters little side story, or the pedestrian and I go to heaven. Yea right!

No big side stories for real me. I drive slow when I have been drinking. Like tonight, but I'm home. 2009 Ravenswood Zinfandel Old Vine Vintners Blend. $11.95. Daddy was out, it was cold and I was watching old french subtitled movies.

 Désolé, je suis solitaire ce soir. Femme enfant solitaire avec un esprit agité

:)

I've been quiet

     I've been quiet lately. Its the other side of the manic me. My summer was Chloe the go-bot, all doing this and thinking that, and I used up all the extra energy I had.

     School has taken up where my leisure ended, and I am making a real effort to see if I can make it work for me. I am undecided still if its the path I want to go down. The obvious benefits are the acquisition of accepted experiences and formal validation. You go to school, you get a degree and people know you to be of a certain quality.

     But what I see is a certain sameness and fear of not being previously validated, that feels to me like something I don't want. I think I want to write, but do I really need a degree, and then a masters, and some awards and participations in workshops to do that? Well yes If I want "those folks" to take me seriously. Academia can be a trap, or a sort of private club, or even a trade guild!

     I so want to say "fuck you" to some of that. I'm lucky that I don't need to struggle to succeed just to feed myself. Whoring out my life, following the rules, because of fear of failure/starvation/homelessness.  Yet I fear. Just the unknown of it, when the known path is right there in front of me!!

     I've got time to figure it out, and support and resources too, so all the above is just intellectual goofing.

     Dad came home a few weeks after me, and its been great to be around him. He's chilled and relaxed alot and isnt so sad anymore. He's wistful at times, but not depressed. We can remember mom and laugh at stuff she did or would have done and not "go there".

     He is going to go to India later, maybe early next year or in the spring. He's going to do a meditation course, http://www.sikhara.dhamma.org/  and then travel a bit without too much planning. I think he's officially in his own mind, retired, although I suspect he will consult some now and then just because he loves it.

     I wish Shelly would hurry up and have a baby! I think Dad would be a good grandpa. Or maybe I should just find some random guy and get knocked up with out telling him. That would give me something to write about!  But then I have probably used up most of the family support karma I had, so maybe not. But if there are any applicants for the position, random knocker upper, I'll give it a look.

    I've bogged on my Novel. I need to wait for the next manic attack! I've got a firm concept, a rough outline, and maybe 10,000 words from stuff I've already done that can be reworked into it, but still don't have all the plot elements in line. Tentative title; "Projection, an Autobiography", cause that's what it is! Have I mentioned the concept? I don't remember..    :)

Maybe I should just let it happen. I think what is holding me back is the lack of craft. I am enthusiastic, but when I read others work and see how tight and beautiful it can be, I hold back. I don't want to go halfway into something big and then be disgusted by my lack of skills.

     Fear is a funny thing, it keeps me from going where I want sometimes, or makes me go where I don't want (school). Someone wise (Gangaji, a real cool woman, gangaji.org ) said recently to "go to the center of it and see whats there". Something I've tried a couple of times, and when I did go to the center of my fear, nothing was there. Its an illusion I create myself. Its kinda a lifting yourself by your boot straps kinda thing. Fear is an illusion created out of fear!

     Maybe the rule I should make is that I should do stuff just because I fear it. We'll see how that goes!

:)

More thoughts

A little delayed reaction on my part, but I am sort of in the mood to think about my mom this past week. I posted on one of my other blogs, http://faredgeofseventeen.blogspot.com/ a post called Yesterday. It was the day after the one year anniversary of her death. I had felt like it was just yesterday that she died, but also so recent that I had been with her. Sorry for sad sounding stuff. It's not sad really, to remember her, but it is to miss her.

I wanted this blog to be a "moving forward" thing, but the past seems to follow me! If you want to see where I have been, again its backwards on a blog, the oldest buried at the bottom so START HERE: http://faredgeofseventeen.blogspot.com/2010/10/far-edge-of-seventeen.html  I started blogging about a month after my mom died. I never really ever thought about blogging before and now I have 4!

And I am sort of working on maybe writing a book. Two years ago if you would have said I would be writing, I would have said "nuh uh". But now its something that fills a need. Of course if I keep getting C's in english, people will laugh at the idea of me writing! But writing for school requires following certains rules, so that the reader CAN GRADE YOU. In otherwords if you don't write like they think you should, down goes the grade. I am stubborn and write like I want. I write because I want to!

It gives me an excuse to go out and get in trouble so I can write about it! Well not in trouble, but do stuff. Like "oh I don't really like frat guys and the bro crowd, but maybe I'll go to that party for ideas and to see what its like".

Gotta live life.

My mom lived life. She had real adventures. Scary ones too, and did stuff I wouldn't do. Drugs, sex, cults, and also family and love and trying to make the world better.

I want to be like my mom. Maybe no drugs and cults!

:)

Don't worry I'm not taking this blog off into sad land! But just its on my mind right now. My trip this summer changed me a little but very subtly. I wanted to kinda be thrown into adventure, pushed and challenged. I wanted to learn more how to be with people, and I did, sort of.  It was different than I expected, people are wonderful, even if they don't know you, they will take you in and give you a chance to be friends. That's what I learned. I didn't really ever have the feeling of being alone, even when I was. I was thousands of miles from home, but people were always around, and they weren't so different from me.

I don't think I can ever be like my mom was at my age, doing things that could go wrong in a bad way. Sleeping where its not safe, being on drugs. She was reckless and I'm not so much. But I think she was even more unhappy than I ever was. I was a mess at 16 and 17, but I had support she didn't somehow. I know she loved her parents, and they were good people, but she left home two weeks after she turned 18.

I could never do that, break off from family like that. But she came back eventually and made her life.

Maybe that is the thing I admire most about her, that she made her life on her own, and I have so much support. The part I want to copy is the variety and intensity of experiences maybe.

 I came back from my trip with a better sense of myself and more confident, and had some good experiences and some more difficult.

I think I am off to a good start!

Thoughts

Wow! I wrote 16,000 words.

And they are all posted backwards. That's the bad thing about blogging, what you write, posts most recent on top, and if its a serialized story, its all out of order. Sucks. I tried to find a way to fix that, but oh well.

So Please start here:  "What I Did This Summer"  for my "What I did this Summer", not at part 5!   Thanks.  :)

I got sort of manic writing all that, and then started school this week. I really wanted to take one of Dr Andy Jones poetry classes but he didn't have one. I have expository writing with Martel. Hope he doesn't think I'm a silly girl and that all I have written so far is bad.

I know I write loose and kinda like I talk, rather than serious and well crafted. I want to learn the craft part too, but I DON'T want to loose the feeling. Know what I mean? There is a lot of feeling in my life, and right now that's what I want to talk about.

Writing can be something you do for other people, or that you do for yourself, and I do it for me. I get almost no feedback, and that's fine, because I don't know how I would handle it. Yea people say "I liked what you wrote", but that's politeness.

It would be hard to sit and watch the personal stuff I write torn apart.

And that's what happens when you write school stuff, so school stuff ends up being something different.

Not me.

:)

Pretty clouds, like my thoughts, noticed, enjoyed, then gone when I look again.

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