COVID, MADNESS!! Oh My.

Laying out in a hammock between two trees off to the side of the house drifting in and out of fantasy, nodding at times into dream..

The air feels wonderful, so soft as it moves around me. Warm with patches of hot, and tendrils rising cool from the earth.

The afternoon spent in waking dream and nap. Yet I have no desire to rise, focus and function, just lie.

The only noise is in the distance, vague, jumbled rumblings and hums.

There are other sensations too, the higher pitched tingle that is present in all life. An almost electric feeling that underlies all other sensations, almost as a fabric for the joys and trauma we feel less subtly.

It is a feeling that if surrendered to, reminds of bliss, yet more neutral. A deep center perhaps, to cling to in the wild trips to the farther reaches of living, joy and trauma. Still, everchanging....life.

Greta would want me to be as I am today, chilled in a hammock, warm, mind in a good place, quiet, calm. Neutral is hard for someone like me who swings wildly through passionate urges and desperate failures. But the wild swings and the neutral are both found in the same place; the observer, watching the mind in all its creation, providing illusion and reality.

I went to her funeral recently. Was not invited, went anyway. No one stopped me. Her partner cried noticing several young women, distancing, in the back, quietly weeping. Girls Greta had loved via her practice, unknown to her partner or each other. "Patients" officially. Loved individually and unconditionally none the less.

Thank you for letting her have her work. You gave up enough of her to save several of us.

Clearing out my past, shameful secrets...

I am reposting a bit I wrote on an ex Scientologist message board back in 2011. Seems like another me. I've always been hesitant about talking about this as it has deep family wounds in it.

______________________________________________________

"I was never a scientologist, but maybe I was and I didn't know it. Hope this makes sense and its ok to write about it here. My mom was a scientologist and so where her mom and dad, my grandparents, so I grew up with it sort of in the air around me. My dad wasn't a scientologist, he says he's almost a buddhist, but he likes some of the ideas of scientology, but didn't like the church part of it. He says they try to control people too much to really do what they say they are trying to do.

My mom had been a scientologist since she was a teenager, and it was so much a part of who she was that even if I had never heard of it, she would have passed on the ideas and stuff just from being around her. But my grandma was the one who tried to get me interested in it, not my mom. Grandma would always seem to turn the conversation around to something "Ron" said. We could be talking about feeding the ducks in the park and somehow there would be some thing he said that was related! I loved her a lot, but my mom always said that it was more important what I thought was true, than what other people thought, so I would tell grandma "thank you for that", and if she went on too much I would hug her and ask for cookies.

I guess I was a manipulative child! She meant well, and yes it made sense, but why did everything have to be what he said or thought? Mom never directly pushed stuff on us, but now that I am older, I see that a lot of the stuff kinda rubbed off.

I have never even been inside a scientology church. I used to ask about it when I was like 8 or 10. Mom let me go to church with my friends sometimes, I've been to mass and to synogoge and even once a mormon church! But never her church. She said its not a church like that where you go in groups, but more like you study in private and get counseling in private. I was curious to go but she said no, I had to wait until I was at least 18 and then I could if I wanted. But she warned me that they would put a lot of pressure on me to do things I didn't know I wanted to.

My grandma used to run little churches called missions, but that was when I was real little and I never got to see one. She did train us though. One summer she had us with her, me, my brother and older sister, and she taught us how to do "TR's" which were where you sit across from another person and practice talking in a way that was better. Really it was fun, but I was the little one and sitting still was not easy! But I loved when I got to tease the other person, because I could say anything I wanted! And I said stuff that I normally wouldn't be allowed to! It made me cry sometimes when my brother did it to me, but after a while I got where it was so what and stuff didn't bother me. Its still something that I use sometimes, like if I notice that someone is saying stuff, I can just smile to myself knowing they are just trying to get to me. So see how maybe I am a little bit of a scientologist?

We learned about "ARC" and how the different things moved up and down and how you could raise them and be in control and make things better. We even got some auditing with the emeter from my grandma. She would do it when our ARC was down sometimes or if we were fighting with each other and stuff. We would go into her bedroom where she had a table set up and hold onto the cans and she would ask us questions until we felt better or understood what was going on, or told our secrets. Sometimes she would keep asking us the same question over and over about stuff like who could you communicate with? Who could communicate with you? Who could communicate with another? She made if fun, and she really liked doing it. I always felt real nice after.

Of course as a teenager I used stuff I knew the other way to intentionally cause problems. I didn't like sit down and say to myself "I am going to use scientology for evil" or anything, it was more like subconsciously I used it to make drama and get attention. It was like I was doing the TR for teasing in real life on my mom and dad, but they couldn't take it. I would do things that made no sense, and refuse to talk about it! Making people not like me just to be trouble. Or maybe to make people prove that they loved me even though I was a pain.

Funny how stuff sounds so good when you read about it and practice, but doesn't always work in real life. Sort of like the scientology church. They were all "everyone is welcome here and you can be a god if you want!", but if you didn't think like they wanted you were evil!

My dad liked a lot of the ideas. He would talk for hours with my grandpa who was an operating thetan 3. And it wasn't like they disagreed, and they both loved talking about real out there stuff, but when it came to the church my dad couldn't get him to see how much they tried to control him.

My dad almost became a scientologist, but they made the mistake of telling him he could not say certain things, and he basically told them to FO! This was the big thing that made so much trouble in our family. After that my mom, her ex husband, my grandma and grandpa couldn't be operating thetans anymore. They never got kicked out of the scientology, but scientology took away the big thing they wanted so bad. My older sister was my moms child with her ex husband, and he was way more into the church part of things and they threatened to make him keep my mom and sister apart if she kept being trouble. I don't know how they could do that, I mean she lived with us and only saw him weekends mostly, but somehow people in scientology do stuff like they can't see that they are being manipulated and stuff. I could see it even when I was a kid, but the grownups were like too wrapped up in things that they couldn't see.

My dad is a psychiatrist too and scientology hates them! Even though they practically begged him to join! They bugged him for several years to join and like say see scientology is good, even a psychiatrist can be one. My dad is real mellow, as chill as they come, but he doesn't take shit. I think he loved my mother a lot to put up with what they did and not say more or speak out more. I could tell he was angry sometimes, but he didn't like to spread bad emotions around and didn't get all dramatic about it. He is a good example of being able to take stuff and not get upset like in the TRs and he isn't even a scientologist!

Mom loved him so much too. She told me she was so lucky to find a man who understood her and loved her for who she was, and was willing to let her be herself. She said she never regretted what she did, breaking up with her husband to marry another man who was supposed to be evil or something! My dad is great. So was mom.

So our family was like in some sort of standoff about scientology. My grandma was all excited about it mostly, but if she tried to talk to mom about it, mom would change the subject. But mom was so into it and spiritual stuff that it didn't make sense. That is probably the reason I never decided to be a scientologist, because of that sort of weirdness about it. Why wouldn't my mom talk about it? And let me see their churches?

My grandpa is pretty chill about it even though he is an operating thetan. He is more a think for yourself guy. He is used to being in charge and having people listen to him and wasn't afraid to say what he wanted. He used to say that scientology was a cult, and then he would recite the dictionary definition of cult and explain how that wasn't really a bad thing! He had done legal work for some corporations of scientology and knew a lot of celebrities who were scientologists and ones that weren't, and I think the church was sort of afraid of him so they didn't try to keep him quiet. I think my mom was more like my grandpa than grandma, they thought for themselves. Not that they were always right! But they were true to themselves, something scientology seems to hate.

My grandparents spent way too much of their money on scientology too. They only have my grandpas pension and social security to live on now and they don't even own their house, because of all the money they spent. They are in their 80's and still have to worry about money even though they are too old to work. The people still call them from the church though, sometimes several times a day! They just let the answering machine answer every call. They never pick up the phone until you start talking. Weird. Its like there are these big ideas and stuff that they believe in, but its all mixed up in some money scam or something!

So its like I think a lot of scientology ideas are in me from being around my mom and grandparents. I don't know what they are really because I would have to study scientology more, but from what I do know, I was raised to think and act a certain way. I'm just at the age where I am really looking at who I am and stuff, and I think I will see this more and more.

My sister hates scientology because of her dad, but she loves him and doesn't say too much. It was real hard for her even though my mom never told her about what was going on until she was an adult, but I think she could sort of tell from the way her mom and dad acted about it. Its funny, I am the kid who most took to any of the ideas of scientology, I like spiritual stuff and meditation and the idea that you are not your body, but a spirit in a body. My sister is all about her house and her cars and her pool and parties and her job and clothes and could care less about those sort of things. Funny because her dad so much wanted her to do scientology stuff! And mom wouldn't let me.

My bother thinks its all a big joke and a scam, but he's smart enough not to say that to my grandma! Grandpa just laughs. He lives in LA where there are a lot of scientologists and I think that he knows some. He is trying to be in a band and things like that, but I don't see him joining! I can see him sort of pretending to be one if it suits him. Like if there is a girl who is one! He can do an impression of a scientologist that is real funny where he stares at you real intense and says OK, GOT THAT, and TELL ME ABOUT THAT and stuff and acting all concerned. I just hope he doesn't piss off any scientologist and get his butt beat!

Me? I still want to see a scientology church and I'm 18 now, but I know deep in my heart that I can never be one. Not that scientologists are bad people or that all the ideas are bad, but just because it is wrong to turn your thinking over to other people, no matter how good their intentions. I think people get lost in it little bit by little bit, until they are in too deep.

I think my mom would want me to see a church and talk to them and have them try to get me to join, once I am strong enough to be true to myself. I am way stronger now than I was a year ago, but looking back at the whole scientology thing, I think wanting to know more about scientology is just curiosity. How did this stuff do what it did to my family? How can people be so blind in some ways?

My grandparents don't do anything with it anymore, and we never talk about it. My mom died a year ago, September 17. So scientology is mostly out of my life except for maybe wanting to understand what happened or why.

Any way that is sort of my story about scientology and me.



Chloe"

https://www.forum.exscn.net/threads/scientology-and-me.24802/

Home

I'm home. My Dad has been traveling a bit and mostly staying at our vacation house in Casper on the coast.

I've got the Yountville house to myself, I can skinny dip and sun to my hearts content!

Nights are lonely out in the vines...very different from the constant noise of a big city, from the continuous availability of other humans.

When you are in a big city, there is no stillness, no open space. There sure is aloneness! All those people and no one to talk to!

Living in the midst of vineyards there are moments of pure stillness, plenty of space, but still no one to talk to!

I'm mostly fine with that. I like aloneness. I've been gardening. Rescued the tomatoes my Dad started. Getting used to the fuller fruit of Napa wines. The killer cannibis..

I'm back on my meditation schedule, morning and evening, 1 hour each. Lazy days.

Now I am starting to think of warm flesh to flesh contact with someone. Someone who thinks, who can chill, and who can tolerate my weirdness! Temporary or long term, gender not too important. That shall be my mission from the vines!

I've been taking nocturnal walks, down the road, cutting through the fields. Animals are out there. I've seen racoons and possum, heard the mice and ducked when a big owl flapped flapped by 10 feet overhead. He lives in some giant oaks nearby. Makes me think of Harry Potter. I await my message!

I could walk naked if I wanted, no cars, no people. Maybe the next full moon..

See you then.

:)

Chloe

Leaving Barcelona

(Click and listen to the music while reading please :)  )

I'm leaving Barcelona. Enough hiding here, from myself, in a vibrant city that does not notice quiet me.

Not that I need noticing, but I do need more connection that I will ever establish on my own, and so far from family and familiar. I need to be somewhere where people have to accept me as I am, home.

My Manic turns no longer strong enough to balance, and dark creeps in.

I need my daddy, and my stuffed animals, reverting to teen me, needy.

I am close to calling an end to calling myself a writer. It isn't easy to spill your life out onto paper, that is what writers do. I haven't had enough life, enough "blues" to spill. Spoiled little rich girl with aspirations above her station, authenticity in paucity.

No, I will still write, just abandon the pretense. Living in an exciting foreign city, in my little atticie apartment, I do play the part well.

My Dad supports me financially along with my Moms money, and I think this is part of the problem. I need to move somewhere MORE expensive and struggle with daily life MORE!

Ideas worthy of words don't come from comfort and privilege. At least that is what I'm thinking.

My brother is in LA. Maybe I'll go there. But it's scary, so big, so much distance between people, cars, hours in the slow lane, hyper-aspirational hard bodies abounding. Maybe not.

New York would be the thing, but would I fit in, little nester me, in a city that is extroverted and intense? No real need to be where publishing happens to write, but the people! Characters, inspiration, rage, all boiling and churning....sigh...the great American novel could write itself on the observations from a stoop...

:)

Chloe

Donald Reynolds, An Uncaged Mind

Author Donald Reynolds

When I was first putting out my book "Far Edge of Seventeen" I spent a lot of time online trying to figure out how to do it and what other people were going through as a writer. I ran into Donald Reynolds online somewhere and introduced him to my website guy. He had one book out, "Greed, Lust and Vengeance". Now he has four! And apparently two websites; http://greedlustandvengeance.com and now http://uncagedmindspublishing.com

He's got me beat by a long ways! I'd better get busy!

He writes with an absolute air of authority on the subjects he favors, sometimes pretty raw, but always with a lot of humanity.

Give him a read!

Ghetto Lust

Ghetto Lust II

Greed, Lust and Vengeance

Greed, Lust and Vengeance II

La Vie du Femme

Every woman's life is a story waiting for a great lover to write.

Us shy ones wait. 

We should be the great love of someone. Yet it doesn't always happen.

We live quietly, have our interests, our cats.

In our hearts, passion too large to share without overwhelming.

We scare them off with chaste demeanor hiding lust.

They don't notice us anyway.

That we are here, ready.




.

Illusion

We are just a dream god is having

His nightmare, to be lost in it,

Come true.

Never to wake

To self, again

Love, 

Reduced to an idea

Instead of all.

Jilling to Braco

His unwavering gaze transforms lives with no words spoken. The silent audience waiting for that moment when his eyes sweep the audience and meet theirs.

Online or in person his intense, almost unblinking attention, freezes you, you can not look away.

"Braco", the Croat faith healer, has enchanted many who hope for relief; in life, with illness, with just being happy. I want to be happy. I need healing. Don't we all?

I had his online sessions on my calendar for a couple of weeks. I had not been "gazed" before so I was excited to see what the deal was. Would it be cheesey with a pitch for a donation? Or the life altering meeting of student and teacher with a transmission of wisdom, and life altering aftermath?

I researched him for hours, reading what little there is to explain what he is doing or how it works. Is it a form of hypnosis? That would be a legitimate, scientific explanation for "healing". First you set expectations in the subject, including the idea that what will happen will be because of the gaze, then the gaze activates the expectations.  Simple shaman technique, conman trick, healer method.

The mind is powerful, the mind can be influenced.

Hypnosis is not so unusual in our daily lives. Advertising, religion and manipulative people use the same techniques; declare a goal, create a narrative in which the goal is accomplished by the actions to follow, and then with permission of the subject, direct their thinking by controlling their attention. Hypnotists get your willing cooperation to temporarily allow them to direct your attention. It can be used for good, or to sell you stuff you didn't know you needed. More shoes...god...elected officials...I'm not afraid of it!

So I had the time blocked out, my door locked, my phone on mute. My laptop open to the page where I was to see him. I was on the couch a half hour before, waiting, while the morning sun started to come around to my southern window, where it made a lovely pool of light around me for 45 minutes every day.

I felt like a relaxed cat, woke from a long nap, fully stretched, groomed. Ready.

The time arrives, 10 am, and I have to use my vipassana skills to quiet the tingling of anticipation. Dramatic music and sweeping scenes of his temple of translucent onyx play on my screen..

Then some German doctor or something comes on and spends the next 45 minutes telling us what to expect, think and do after the yet to occur magic. Not what I wanted. I wanted to just have the experience, not to be preconditioned for it. Urrgghh!

Sock me with the grace, the melting love. I want release and stillness, magically. Leave the thinking behind.

Then it is time. He comes out and takes his place on a stand with cushions in the warm glow of backlit onyx, the camera gently zooms closer, to his face, his eyes, and he is doing it!

The Gaze.

At first it is nothing, just eyes unblinking. As I relax into it, I start to feel as if he is actually looking only at me, not through a camera and electrons whizzing, but directly. I feel him.

He is unjudging. Loving. There just for me.

I haven't had that sort of intimacy for a while. I let my prejudice fall away and accept his gaze. I gazed back, getting the feeling of him and I, alone, flowing psychic love at each other. No secrets possible, no hurt unseen. Held tenderly in gaze.

I felt my nagging worries fall away, my self consciousness too. I was open to him and he could see me to my core. So warm and safe, so acknowlegded, so known.

And then I was touching myself, no shame, he knew and still did not stop loving, gazing.



http://www.braco.me/en/events/detail/383/

Future Matrix

Things in the future reach back to influence your present.

Karma, not only as determinate origin, the idea that every present moment and circumstance is a result off all that was before, but also as the result of all that comes after, is a new idea for me.

What I finds in the present is both influenced by its past but also by what is in its future. All vectors of possibility holistically influence every other.

I think only god can fully experientially understand this idea, but us lesser divisions of the all can get a glimpse of it intellectually. How would it be possible to exist as an individual unless cut off from the full understanding of this? What Point would there be in omniscience? What fun?

Is Chloe getting too deep? Has she smoked too much fine morocan hashish? Or is she just thinking out loud?

Well she just had an experience of the above...

Love

C

I'm Open...

I'm open to talking and corresponding, mainly corresponding, I don't like the phone, so you'd have to be in Barcelona to actually talk talk.

I'm sort of a hermit girl, quiet as a mouse, never seen in short tight dresses in early am club frenzies, surrounded and jammed together with other sweaty, desperate, evolved monkeys. (Yes I do know the difference between ape and monkey, but that is a tail for another day).

I DO socialize here in Barcelona, but it tends to be superficial, hi how are you? Fine? Great! Or those wine fueled deep talks with people at parties who just want to insist on their world view as if it were the pronouncements of THE oracle. I can follow along for a while but wine and thinking are divergent courses. Mainly for me, my convo partners have no problem.

I have had correspondents before, writer types who could play the game, lobbing ideas into my court and setting up for my replies, knowing I would make them move to stay in play.

It helps me as a writer to have some outlet to write to other than my work-in-progress. It cleans out the brain ducts to flow out for fun the stuff that doesn't fit into the WIP.

You can talk sexy (man or woman, if you dare and are good at it, ) or practical or stream of consciousness, I'm good at all, just don't be boring.

And if its just emails, you can be whoever you want to be and I'll play.

:)

I'm Feeling Feminine Today

I'm feeling feminine today. Not that I don't always, but today I feel it more. Good meditation, shifting cyclical hormones, a quiet week and suddenly I have an urge to pretty up. Not FOR anybody, just because.

I feel delicate, happy, quiet, calm, loving, wanting to share, open to intimacy, strong, vibrant, sexy, and not in an intense rush, but in a gentle warmth.

I want to cuddle and talk...with someone! Not with myself in my head! I want to cook someone dinner, make love to them and fall asleep touching.

I want to wear the sheerest cotton bit of a sundress and walk in the cooling evening, feeling the air on my skin, feeling the air moving the fabric against me and away like caresses.

I want to be silly and playful, submissive and teasing, warm and open.

I want to hunt you with my teases, attract you with my retreat, feed on you with my desire.

:)

Love

Chloe

My most recent rejection email from Elephant Journal.

I don't know why I want to be published by EJ...maybe because I like reading it? I try, and get rejected repeatedly, yet remain mostly unfazed. I like my thoughts and words. That should be enough, and usually is.

elephant journal
to me

Dear Chloe,

Thanks for putting yourself out there. This is interesting but I'm not getting much of a cohesive story or message---you seem to be bouncing from topic to topic. I'm not sure what your examples are intended to illustrate. Is there a way that you can pare it down and clarify your message? Keep it simple, focus on one thesis and it will be more accessible to our audience.

We’re not here to change your fundamental message (usually)—we are here to make sure your message can connect.

Please send your revision in this same thread when you're ready. If we don’t reply to that within a week, you might need to find a new angle/subject.

With thanks for your effort and heart—

Yours in the vision of Enlightened Society,

Renee

Me to Renee..

Yes...cohesive. Well I'm not, my life is not and that is sort of the point. Graduating, moving out into life without the structure that had held things together for the previous 23 years, and the wide open opportunity isn't cohesive.
Cohesiveness is frequently a symptom of attachment to externally derived patterns, a free mind (and body) will no doubt bounce around a bit in the time after those patterns are no longer enforced.
My life is open moving forward, sexually, literarily, yet the vestiges of old patterns still color it. That is the point.
If it is too obscure for you and your readers, if I am not writing to a plot, but just letting thoughts find words and that is not enough...no apologies.
It is enough for me and is how I write. An audience isn't as important. Maybe one will come, maybe not.
Thanks for your comments and taking the time to read me.

 

Sometimes I'm a deviously passive aggressive little bitch aren't I!

Madness

I feel the moon on the sunny Med,

Waiting

Fading light, letting go

The shadows fall on the day.

What nonsense will greet its rising?

Full, luminous, howl inspiring.

Barcelona Near Spain

I moved to Barcelona after graduation. I'd never been there before, didn't know anyone there, and didn't really have a firm goal. I just wanted to plop my butt down somewhere completely outside my safe places.

Barcelona is one of the worlds cool cities, vibrant culture, amazing architecture, and a welcoming atmosphere for ex-pats.

Love that! Ex-pats.. the implications of the word... ex patriated.. removed from home.. the mystery... why..?

I was sick of school. Not that I don't severely need more education! But how I get educated...shouldn't be so dreary, so tedious, boring, and really so much an exercise in conforming to thought and conclusions reached by people who are now tucked safely into tenure and self validated wisdom. ( you know I'm taking about you JT, if you would ever deign to read what I write without judgement of the minor aspects of my writing that are not....conforming!)

I wanted danger, to move way outside my comfortable and into a challenge, but a safe one alas. Barcelona is safe. Well except for the pickpockets and the men with the intense eyes who challenge what used to be called a womans virtue...  :)

I arrived on Aer Lingus, after a layover in Dublin, at about 8pm in the evening with no reservations for the night, no local contacts and 49.99 lbs of suitcase and 20 more of backpack.

The RENFE train got me he into the city center a little after 9. Instead of looking for a hotel, I ducked into the first place I saw that looked like a glass of wine was what they wanted to make sure I had before anything else.

For a Napa valley girl, dirty, tired and exhilarated, my priorities were straight. Wine. Then some tapas or Pintxos, and maybe later....sleep and a wash, but only if the night had no other promise.

Lugging a suitcase into restaurants actually is a really good tactic, it lets people know just who I was and wasn't. I didn't finish the first glass of a really nice red house wine before a guy was at my side being friendly. Of course that sort of thing can go either way, but he wasn't a single predator (darn?) and invited me to a table of other people who wanted to keep their own night interesting by grilling a new arrival.

I ended up on the couch in the flat of a couple of german girls who thought California was some magical place inhabited by cool people. Who'd a thought just being from Cali was an entrée to the cool circle internationally!

And then, friend of an acquaintance of a friend, and a few days later, I had a room with a couple in El Raval.   Carrer de la Paloma, 11, 08001 Barcelona, Spain

Gotta love people!

_______________________________________________________________________

I'm home in Yountville with my Dad for a couple more weeks, then back to the adventure. 

I'm so tempted to take a ferry down to north Africa...it's a direct connection from Barcelona to Tangier Morocco...35 hours!..but worry the later day Barbary Pirates or some such horrors await. I'll save that for a group outing..

I can easily hop up to France, six and a half hours to Paris, a couple hours to Perpignan across the border.

But what have I really been doing there? Walking around. Eating too much. Drinking too much. Reading a lot. And just getting comfortable. Oh yea...writing a bit, my real reason to distance myself from the known.

I'm thinking of shipping my mountain bike over...but I'm up 4 floors and don't have a safe place to lock it up without carrying it up!

_______________________________________________________________________

What a change from California where there is not much that is over a couple hundred years old, and most is boxes built for economy, embellished only with cheap flourishes to mimic architectural styles.

Architecture is the art of accommodating people in and around buildings. It can be beautiful or utilitarian, fanciful or horrid. It effects how people feel about a place, and the identity they generate for a it.

Language has similar influences.

Barcelona is profoundly shaped by both.

Gaudi and catalan, (and the associated lust for independence from Spain).

____________________________________________________________________________

More reports sporadically....

Love

Chloe

Improbable thoughts on what I might actually do with the rest of my life, as a post baccalaurette.

Yes I know I spelled baccalaureate wrong. I spell wrong a lot, but this was intentional. I will be a woman with a degree soon. I think it is different than being a man with one. Well just enough to make a small point about it. I'm not feeling like I am the lessor of the genders, just the less likely to be paid the most. Let the boys have the money, us girls have the vaginas.

Its like owning the best hotel in the years super bowl city, or a store with this months hottest fashions, or park place in monopoly, it gives power in the right circumstances.

Circumstances are made, even though some just fall into them, The wise and ambitious don't fall, they create.

It all starts with thought, you are the result of all your previous thoughts (and the actions and consequences of them). That is karma, the sum of all your previous thoughts, actions and reactions. The buddhists have a concept of dependent origin, everything is the result of something previous.

You didn't just end up living in a shit hole and having the world working against you, or in a mansion and with a magical life, EVEN IF IT SEEMS LIKE THAT JUST HAPPENED with no input on your part. The wisdom is in seeing your karma, seeing that big ball of all your prior stuff that was just before NOW, the reason now is what it is.

:)

So what are my karma and vagina up to?

(This reminds me of what a drunk guy confessed to me at a keg party last year, he said "sometimes I think of girls as just a transportation and support mechanism for their pussy". Yeah. He really said that, and I appreciated his honesty. He must have felt comfortable with me to trust me with that. Saved me the trouble of making sure I looked and acted cute and alluring with him!
Later that night I sat with him and helped him wipe his face with paper towels after he finished puking. He told me I was nice. He didn't remember then, that I was just a support mechanism for a vagina. He was probably feeling like he needed a mommy at the moment and no guy can think about his mom like that! I like guys, they are simple. I used the transport function of the vagina support device to go home early before things got cave man simple.)

My karma is currently good. I'm in a good place, well situated for the future. I've got financial support and means to explore without being tied to working. I'm willing to work, if it is interesting. I've got a passport with plenty of open pages! And I have almost no obligations. My only obligations are thoughts, consideration of how what I do going forward, will affect those I love. Truly that is my only obligation.

What would my dad think if I decided to work as an escort to research material for my writing? I wouldn't be the first girl go for a little adventure like that. In fact I wouldn't be the first girl in my facebook friends list!

I mean I've really thought about it, researched it on the net and stuff. Its fairly safe with the right agencies, they send a guy with you in the car and the clients are vetted before hand (at the really good agencies). You might even get a night with a silicon valley hot shot or doctors, lawyers and visiting dignitaries! With what they pay, $1000+ a night, these aren't guys off the street.

But its still prostitution. Daddy wouldn't like that.

I wouldn't either, but I've run the ideas of it around in my head. Not really fantasy as much as exploring where the imagination can go before it runs into barriers.

But why is it that sex and women's role is so stigmatized? Why would I be more damaged goods than the guy? Why isn't my sexuality entirely my own? Its almost like maybe it could be liberating to just say "fuck off" to the powers that be, "I can do what ever I want and what you think is your problem!"

Yeah Chloe, I dare you.

Well I was brave enough to think it. I wouldn't be brave enough to say I did it. (the reader is left to think..)  :)

I entertain even more bizarre and disturbing thoughts sometimes. Not as my own desires, but to explore beyond the edges.

What would it be like to commit to suicide by moving to Africa and working as a prostitute to truckers in Uganda? (A major AIDs vector). How would that story write out? Rich white girl decides to end it all as slowly and messily as possible. There's a writing prompt for some creative writing class. Would she change her mind after it was too late? Would the sex be brutal or would there be human moments? Is it racist to use this idea? I'm not going to use the idea, to much else to be writing, but my mind wanders sometimes.

The current work in progress, (book) is bogged. I'm just not experienced enough in living to write what I know is there. I NEED experiences. Again. I had them before but they are used up.

I'm considering stuffing a small knapsack with a pair of jeans, a skirt, a pair of shorts, 3 tops, a bra, and 5 pairs of panties, my passport and credit cards and a few sundries, and just taking the first super cheap flight out of here. I got this idea from: http://tynan.com/

Travel aimlessly but fortuitously.

Would I find love? Purpose? Rich experience, either good or bad?

Can I jump into the unknown?

But really I have; Every now is at that precipice of a void.

Chloe

_____________________________________________________________________

A little post script..after a nice bike ride and reflection on what I wrote above..

I think the prostitution thing is sort of my reaction to the whole expectation of entering the working world after graduation. I mean you don't even own your own life in many cases. Student debt, the projections of your worth as described by your material comfort and success. Family, society, your own implanted patterns of thought all focused on the material.

You prostitute your soul to pay for your material life.

I want to do things in my life that are a continuing exploration of my self as a sprititual being in addition to as one of the many participants in the monkey games.

I want to be Joan Didion not Nora Roberts.

I want to think things and say things that open up the deeper meanings in life, not just pander to the ordinary.

My meditation practice, Vipassana, focuses on observing sensation without contributing to it, reacting to it or avoiding it. Noticing attachment, while not attached. Life is built of various attachments. Needs, beliefs, really any sort of thought or thing that you cling to.

What are we that needs these thoughts and things we are attached to?

Or really are we simply an observer of illusion? Gods little game with herself?

:)

w/love

Chloe

Begining to End

It's beginning to end. The last vestiges of childhood, innocence and freedom. I just have two classes this quarter and then I can walk.

Walk the stage or just walk away with official recognition of being educated. Not that the brief taste and exposure gained with a bachlorette degree is really educated! Life does that way more efficiently.

I will though have jumped through the hoops that qualify me for entry level work in the non fast food track.

I wish it were the 60's and I could drop out of all I tuned in to, be a hippy, have no repercussion sex with gorgeous longhaired men, take drugs that were still innocent, and feel like it meant something. Something not ruined by the term slacker and social responsibility.

I want to be an adult/child, grown physically and emotionally enough to function independent of help, but with no regard for convention or others projected expectations.

Maybe like http://www.jannerobinson.com/

Bare breasted surfing in Costa Rica, writing to live, living to write.

She inspires me. But I'm not thin. Or as driven.

What sort of life DO I want?

Definitely free from convention. No 9-5. I just can't. And don't have too.

But I want purpose! I've had it before. It was to "get through it". I did. Now life is a little flatter. Sounds like depression, but its not, I am content and happy, just a bit adrift.

I see others around me excited to start careers, move into the meat of life. People are starting to semi-permanently couple, prepare to build nesting capabilities, and be more responsible. Binge drinking only on Friday and Saturday!

I am uncoupled and drink steadily, never binging.

And I look into the void of future that is my life, oscillating between projecting fantasy and confronting reality. Only there is no reality except what I move myself into.

I can go any number of ways and am paralyzed with freedom.

Obsession.

Those who know me know I am not the most stable, normal, girl ape on the planet. BiPolar, BiSexual, and sometimes BiZarre.

I've fallen into a stalker'ish minor obsession in the last few days with a most gorgeous man. He wouldn't have any way of knowing I watch him, its all online.

I've spent 4 or 5 hours tracking down every thing there is on the net about him, and check his FB several times a day...

And this is the normal part of this story!

I'm so tempted to put up a photo of him so you all can see why he is so fascinating, but I won't. He looks like a young Brad Pitt! Same scruff of whiskers....

Brad Pitt

Same alluring intensity in the eyes, confident masculinity with out looking like a macho fool. He's smart and funny from reading his comments and posts, and has a diverse circle of friends and family.

He works for a tech company, seems to have a motorcycle and a comfortable life. He gets along with his parents, although I know there were some rough years in his past. Drinking, jail.

He seems particularly self aware, aware of how damaged he was for a while, before he found himself. And now he seems very happy with who he is.

I've read his blogs and those of one of his lovers...it was by chance and googlefu that I found them, they are not in the normal search anymore, but still findable. And wow. He has a past with twists!

Look at the photo above. What would you think his semi-secret is? Gay? Yeah well he is, but that is not the secret!

I've seen photos of him shirtless and he has a nice chest and flat stomach. He always sports a bit of scruff on his chin and lip, sometimes cheeks...

OK. He looks JUST like the guy above, only real big difference is he has no dick. Literally. Never Did!

"He" is a girl who has had her breasts surgically removed and takes testosterone.

Holy Fuck Chole, you are one sick puppy for cyber stalking a transman and fantasizing about what THAT would be like!

A total guy in looks and attitude, (yeah he pulls off "guy" pretty well!) AND GIRL PARTS BELOW!

TO HIM: if somehow you read this, I so have the weirdest crush ever on you. Yea I know this kind of attention is probably unwelcome, and if I were a perfect little Chloe I would never even write this, but I'm not.  I so identify with or want.....how different you are, not that I want what you have, just you are so brave, so hot, and so cool. I don't want to be you, just interesting, complex and a survivor of hurt.

Greta is going to have fun with this in my next therapy session.

:)

Fifty Shades...

Wow.

I just moments ago finished reading 50 Shades of Grey.

I had bought it a year or so ago, meaning to read it because it was a cultural reference sort of book. Something you had to have read so you could make a few snarky comments about it at a party.

But...

I got into it. I SO IDENTIFIED WITH HER in ways that taught me something about myself.

I'm not quite sure what it is, something on the order of could I give myself to another person beyond my limits?

Women my age don't have the social programing to be halfway submissive to men like my moms generation, or more fully like my grandma still is. Much less in the BDSM way.

Could I transcend my own upbringing and what I think of as my basic nature and personality to give more than I was...willing?...able?...prepared to deal with? For some one I loved so completely?

It is an interesting question, and one that drives the book.

I think I could do the Red Room of Pain scenes, if it were just scene. I don't know if I could do it with someone I loved. And I think that was her unanticipated limit.

50 Shades of Grey is the classic romance novel story arc, two people not terribly inclined to each other at first, then attraction and simultaneous repulsion, and then resolution. With a twist of the resolution at the end.

She's my age, my temperament, a bit introverted and introspective, clutzy and self demeaning, and totally dazzled by a man who would dazzle me!

Truth be told, I am not sure I wouldn't whore myself to him.

But then his intrigue with her is exactly in that she won't, and that she will be submissive willingly for love, but not for his less than sane urges. She is good for him, a path out of the darkness. She knows it. He doesn't. Interesting that she truly has the power as a submissive. Something I had never considered. And perhaps this is something that is in play in larger society, women, having power, in ways that are not so obvious.

Will she come back?

Well there are two more books! So its a given.

50 Shades was less than great literature in some ways, but the story, the characters, made up for it.

Now I join housewife's all over in day dreaming about a man who could make me want to submit.

Fetlife.com here I come.

:)

Men are Funny - Psychosexual Dynamics

Funny ha ha? Or funny strange?

Both.

I love them for the silly way they think they can work their way into my life, into my pants, into my heart.

Well maybe they don't think they ARE working their way into my heart, but they do, and mostly way before they get near my pants!

Men are endearing for those very qualities that they are not self aware of, characteristics they don't control, their subconscious drives, deep urges...sweet innocence in the transparency.

Therein lies part of a woman's power.

I've had a few interactions with men over the last couple of weeks that have brought this on. I signed up for LinkedIn®, sort of preparing for the future where I am not sheltered by school and daddy's generosity. https://www.linkedin.com/pub/chloe-smith/a5/114/109   Feel free to connect!

I had a hard time finding people I know, my age and circumstance, but I was having fun just reading profiles looking for unusual but dynamic people. People who were doing interesting things with their lives.

I have a real life pagan wizard as a connection. A real life Albus Dumbledore, who has a school of wizardry, a bunch of degrees and lives a polyamorous lifestyle. It is interesting to google stalk people and read what they have said and what people around them say. Apparently there is a lot of social dynamic foofarah in an extended community of people who live in open and multiple partnered relationships. But you have to give them props for trying! I still haven't totally figured out the women, is it a submissive thing, to be one of several, in a group relationship?

I don't think I could handle all the potential drama. I can see the occasional threesome but not a long term sextuple! (or maybe it should always be an odd number?)

He seems like a sweet guy, but my mental picture is adolescent boy with a bunch of crush girls fawning. How do you extend intimacy over a group? I have a hard enough time with one other.

I also connected up with a couple of authors who are my dads age, 60's ish.

Now I have a book to my name, but it is a amateurish, self involved work, and hardly something to give me cred with the grownup crowd. Maybe points for trying. But the feeling I got from both of them was interest and solicitousness. I felt that cuteness was a big factor in their accepting my connection request. Not that I am so cute, but being a young woman, I feel men that age think I am.

Don't get me wrong either, I like that! I think older guys are sexy as hell if they have that kind of confidence that younger guys just don't have the life experience to pull off. I mean the older guys aren't so horny that they can't look you in the eye for more that a second, and know the way to you, is through your head anyway. And they have been rejected enough that it is just play, not a big ego thing. It's fun to flirt with them.

So one of the guys "liked" a picture of me on my Facebook® from when I was sixteen. And he was not single. What do I think? What am I supposed to think? The photo was from when I was skinny and the caption said I wasn't so skinny anymore. Yeah I like the photo too, but the guy has grandkids almost that age, so he likes it because.....

I think I know men. Their urges are psychosexual. Not necessarily directly toward actual sex, but things that gratify the idea, attention from young women perhaps? Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I don't think so.

The other guy offered to let me read his upcoming manuscript! I warned him that my skills were on display in my own writing and my input would probably be less than profound. He wrote back very supportively and I had the feeling that I could establish a correspondence with him if I wanted. Tempting too as he is a deep thinker from what my googling of his writing showed. I even ordered his last book from Amazon.

I have a bit of reluctance though. Self doubt really, and fear of making a fool of myself! It's like the acceptance of flattery, is a set up for a fall. Not that any of the men I am writing about were blatantly flattering beyond mere politeness, I wasn't being hit on, or even offered the suggestion of a more personal interest. It is just what I feel is the subconscious motivation in men.

So one more guy. He only had 2 connections on LinkedIn® but one was a mutual connection, so when his request came in, I googled him.

HE WAS A FUCKING REGISTERED SEX OFFENDER!

Oh My Fucking God!

Men can not know the creepy ick feeling a girl has when someone who has messed with children, and had it proven in court, try to make contact with them!

I had to dig to find what to do, being new to LinkedIn®, but found how to sent a report to them. Hopefully they will boot him off and report him to the authorities. But probably its not illegal for him to be there.

So men. A range from the amusing to the bizarre.

Amusing is good, even great, I think of amuse as a bit of muse, inspiration. Man muse. I can work the shit out of a little bit of man muse in my life. Sucking inspiration out of life and hopefully into words.

The bizzare can be good, (wizard) or totally fucked up, (child molester).

Four men, a real range of the species' gender. Perhaps a bit of genius in each and also some deviance too.

So my take on men. Psychosexual, biospiritual organisms.

Why do I need them, watch them, worry what they think. Why do I act the way I do around them, different than around other women. Why do I want one so bad.

:)

Chloe