The Expiration Date

PROJECTION

2010-08-09T17:38:00.000-07:00

Humans have the ability to project themselves forward or backward in time. This is an illusion, but because of the concept of linear time, we need to use this terminology. Linear time is a construct of the mind and only that. Everything is contained in the NOW and things we assume will happen in the future are happening now and have already occurred, all in the same moment, which oddly enough, doesn’t exist anyway.

Particles (matter) and events cannot be restricted to a point in space, or time for that matter. They appear in a wave….of potentiality. Due to the fact that we have inactive portions of the human brain and DNA sequencing, we are unable to understand this.

Example: If you experience a painful breakup, simply project yourself (your thoughts, feelings, energy) back to the moment before you met this person. There was a point when that person did not exist in your field of vision. That feeling of peace and lightness can easily be regained, but we have to trick the mind to do it.

Example: If you are in the process of moving and don’t know how you will get it all done, simply project to the point when it is complete. Visualize yourself relaxing, with everything put away, enjoying a glass of wine on your deck. And feel that in your body. Our construct of time then appears to move faster.

Example: The Earth begins to transform, land shifts, weather patterns change, and it feels frightening. Project yourself to the point immediately after consciousness shifts and the ascension is complete and feel what happens! There is peace and delight there because it is NOW.

This is why meditation works. Our mind is the projector and when we switch it off and allow our feelings to propel us anywhere we choose to go, we are there. The mind is the hardware, albeit outdated, and the heart, where feelings reside, is the new software.

The more we do this, the more our mind will short circuit, and as it does, we will begin to awaken those dormant DNA strands and use all of the parts of our human brain….the parts that can see and feel the Divine. All moments are choices, hence the true meaning of the gracious gift of free will. Make yours NOW, in this moment, as the rest is just an illusion.

WE ARE DIRTY LITTLE PEOPLE

2010-02-17T13:30:00.000-08:00

I think we’re dirty. We must be. We need a lot of soap.

I realized this when I ran out of hand soap the other day and had to think twice about whether it would be ok if I used a little of my dish soap, just until I made it to the store. I must be a dirty girl, but you must be very dirty too.

We have soap for our dirty little clothes and special soap for our delicates and unmentionables.
We have soap for our dirty little houses, a separate one for handwashing our dishes (but not our hands), but not to be confused with the soap for the dishwasher, another for our countertops, another for our floors and our windows, and also our cars.

We have soap for our dirty little human bodies, but each part seems to need its very own individual soap. And we never use human soap on our pets. They have their own. And big human soaps are very different from little baby soaps. Men need the deodorant kind and women need the gentle kind to be sparkling clean and fresh in their own biological ways. Babies have their own extra-special soap.

There are innumerable shampoo soaps for our dingy, dry or oily hair, bath and body washes, some that takes us away from it all and I’m guessing somewhere that isn’t so dirty.

And there are foot cleansers, hand soaps, and private parts soap, but God forbid we use our dish soap for our hands or our faces. That it just wouldn’t be right and it’s against the rules.

Let’s not forget our grimy little faces, but we have to make sure that we use an anti-aging or acne, dry, oily, or combination skin soap for our unique physiognomy. No mistakes allowed. And absolutely no face soap to take off our eye makeup, girls. There is another cleanser for that. These are the rules. No exceptions.

And if we are really, really dull and need a good scrub, there are exfoliating soaps. If we take off too much skin, there are moisturizing soaps to make it all better.

If we need disinfecting, there are antibacterial soaps and soaps that don’t even need water so we can get clean on the run. And there are lots of mouthwashes for our dirty little mouths. Some that put enamel back on our teeth, some that make our teeth whiter and kill every germ imaginable to man, and even some that guarantee that we’ll be making out with that cute neighbor that we’ve imagined naked in his shower, soaping up his armpits. There are soaps for every orifice.

So after we’ve been sudsed and sanitized, scoured and swabbed, drenched and douched, scrubbed and abraded, maybe it’s time to ask ourselves, can soaps really be that different or do we need some liquid absolution for our stained and soiled little lives? Praise heaven, I’ve been purified by Palmolive!

Our brains don’t seem to need washing though. Obviously that’s already been done. Disagree? Lather, rinse, repeat. If you are already clean, why do it again? To use (and sell) more soap, silly. God forbid we ask for a one-stop soap, which reminds me of a photo I have of myself on a camping trip years ago. There was only an outhouse at the camp site. We bathed off the end of a boat and used one biodegradable soap for everything. I love that photo and I don’t think I have ever looked better. I was happy and natural, but was I clean enough?

The soap Nazi is watching us and he knows our dirty little secrets. Only he knows how dirty we really are.

2010-02-15T13:27:00.000-08:00

THE ILL CARE SYSTEM

A long time ago when I was in college, I remember feeling unusually fatigued. I slept through my morning classes whether it was in my seat or in my dorm room bed. Something was wrong.

Since I was too young to have my own general practitioner, I ended up asking my Mom’s doctor why I might be feeling this way. He said that as a college kid, I probably wasn’t eating right or getting enough rest. But I was persistent.

“Nope. Something is wrong,” I said. I intuitively knew my own body.

So he agreed to take a blood test, after which time he profusely apologized. I had hypoglycemia (low blood sugar.)

Twenty-five years later, this scenario repeated itself with a different doctor, only this time it had an interesting twist.

“I’m tired all the time,” I said.

“I think you are depressed,” the female doctor replied.

“Nope. I’m not depressed. I’m tired,” I responded, a bit irritated that she was slapping a label on me and seemed excited about shoving a pill down my throat, when all I wanted to do was find out why I could fall asleep standing up. “I don’t want to be on anti-depressants and feel like a cotton ball.”

“A lot of people are on them,” she said. “I take them too.” Her eyes glazed over and she grinned at me.

“Good for you,” I said, as I left her office, wondering if sometimes we get depressed when we are told that we are.

I tried another doctor shortly after that and she also wanted to write off my fatigue to depression.

“Just please take a blood test,” I told her. “That’s what insurance is for, isn’t it?”

She did, and I got a call to meet with her immediately.

“Your glucose test showed 44,” she said, frowning at me. “That is near comatose.”

“At least I’m not depressed,” I said smugly, as I left her office.

A few years after that, I was suffering with headaches. The neurologist suggested anti-depressants too.

“We prescribe them for migraines,” he explained.

“But I’m not depressed,” I argued (again.)

I finally acquiesced and agreed to try a few samples. During that time, my legs went unshaved, I didn’t want to cook or do much of anything else. But I had a perpetual goofy smile on my face. I wasn’t sure if my headaches were gone because I couldn’t feel my head. I saw a commercial about the medication I was taking and it featured an egg (or a cotton ball) happily and gingerly bouncing along. Yep, that was me, but I wasn’t living. I was a happy little egg, existing. I would soon welcome my headaches back with open hands that were anxiously ready to rub my aching skull.

Fast forward a few more years. I told an endocrinologist that I felt that something might be wrong with my thyroid.

“It’s fine,” she said.

“It is not,” I replied. “Check again, please.” I was insistent (again.)

She finally did and she found two antibodies for a particular thyroid disease called Hashimoto’s. I didn’t want to be right, but I was.

The whole point to all of this is that if we pay attention to the signs in our own bodies, we know when we don’t feel good and we know when something is wrong.

This is a very different experience from being told (and programmed) that we are depressed or have every acronymial (my word) disease imaginable. They do this so that we can more easily remember what they have told us we have.

We could have an MPD that made us SAD. We could have an IUD that gave us PID. We could have COPD and hyperventilate and then be diagnosed with PTSD. We could have IBS (I Betcha it’s Stress.)

We could have ED. Well, I couldn’t unless ED stood for extra-dimensional disease, but then that would be EDD. And to me, the mere thought of EDD or any government office is depressing. I’m getting another migraine just thinking about it.

We have determined that our kids have ADD and ADHD and now we adults have it too. Our elderly are overmedicated and not because the pills will help them, but because they might help us deal with them more easily.

My Dad died when I was fourteen which was bad for me. He was only forty-four which was worse for him. He died of a heart attack, so I had always wondered if I would follow in his footsteps (or heartbeats.) I made it to forty-five and beyond, but not without high cholesterol counts in spite of the fact that I exercised daily and had great triglycerides.

I wasn’t feeling bad, but due to so-called genetic predisposition and the fact that I was getting older, the doctors wanted to do a coronary calcium score test. It’s interesting how when we ask them to check, they refuse, but when they want to run a test, they insist. I’m sorry that I agreed to it because they told me that I was in the 90% risk for females for heart disease. Great. Now I need an anti-depressant. Not only that, but as they scanned, they saw other stuff like multiple hemangiomas on the liver, which are fine unless someone punches me or I get into a car accident and bleed out. Oh goody. And kidney stones too, and although I have never felt the little buggers, now I’m afraid to pee. Stop looking inside of me.

The bottom line is that we have become an overmedicated, acronymial society. It’s no wonder that we are hypochrondriacal. We are told that we need Vytorin to keep cholesterol down and Viagra to keep other things up. We are then warned of contraindications and have to take another pill to offset the side effects of the others we are taking for the problems that we are now feeling bad about that we didn’t even know we had.

There is a reason for this. It’s not our health care system. It’s called big business and it is perpetuating an ill care system. Usual and customary? I think not.

Let me tell you how this works. A few years back, I was laid off the day that I returned to work from angio surgery. I definitely had a heart, although it might not be working so well, but the company I worked for obviously did not. A blockage in my LAD (here we go again) was found. To make sure I didn’t forget what this was even if the acronym slipped my mind, the doc said, “Think Tim Russert.” It’s also called the widowmaker. Hello Dad, here I come. I’ve been told to avoid stress. Right.

My Cobra benefits just ran out, so I applied for an individual health insurance plan. I was told that I was not eligible because of pre-existing conditions. I might be able to get a temporary plan while they determined if I could get a HIPPA plan (hippa, hippa hoorah at $756 per month), but I would only be insured if I got hit by a bus and not if anything happened that was already wrong. Huh?

So the health insurance system is designed for the healthy? Ah, I understand now. If I’m ill, and with pharmaceutical commercials inundating my prime time TV hours, I have been convinced that I have PTSD, IBS, ADHD, and I’m MAD about it, I cannot get insurance unless I am willing to pay nearly $800 per month. This might be a stupid question, but if I was healthy, why would I need insurance?

But wait! My doctors have told me that I should not be working. I applied for disability and in spite of the documentation from multiple doctors and the fact that I had worked since I was fourteen years old (around the same time that Dad had passed away), I had to wait seven months for my claim to be approved so I had no income. Thank God that I had a nest egg, not to be confused with the Zoloft or Paxil eggs.

I often wonder, if they hadn’t found all of this that was wrong with me, how would I be feeling? I still might be a little tired because of my low blood sugar and Pacman antibodies attacking my thyroid, but I could be eating better and a nap wouldn’t hurt now and then.

It’s strange how we think it’s a miracle when we are healed. If we were deprogrammed, de-medicated, and listened to our own bodies, it might be a miracle that we ever got sick at all.

I would rather live a shorter life without fear, pills, panic, and programming than a longer one with them. I don’t miss being poked and prodded, the multiple doctor visits, and being over-irradiated and probed like Cavity Sam in Milton-Bradley’s Operation game. Now that I don’t have health insurance, it makes me concentrate on being healthy instead of worrying about being ill.

This just might be a blessing in disguise.

GRID LOCK

2010-01-31T11:09:00.000-08:00

In the beginning was the Word, and Microsoft did not create it.

Our lives are being continually downloaded with words and data that are exponentially increasing in both volume and speed: Facebook, that narcissistic playground for adult children who no longer feel comfortable in public screaming “Mommy, Mommy, look what I can do!” and have three hundred pictures of themselves doing everything imaginable and inform you when they are baking a cake, having their coffee or a BM or thinking about having a BM, MySpace, the textspot for sexpots, Twitter, or how to be a narcissistic from any location on the planet, Farmville (whatever that is and all I can imagine is Old McDonald), forwarded emails and superstitious chain letters that forewarn my demise if I don’t pass them on, SPAM, celebrity gossip and “which celebrity do you look like?” (and who really gives a BM?) reality TV, iPods, texting, blogs, websites, advertisements, hard copy junk mail, and GPS systems which help us get to where we forgot we were going. Implosion is imminent.

So let’s throw the hype about 2012 into the mix. There is more information to process such as astrology, Biblical prophecy, spirit channeling, inactivated DNA strands, solar maximum, earthquakes, black holes, asteroids, and that complicated Mayan calendar that no one can figure out, and if we can’t figure it out, how could an ancient culture have created and understood it? As I peeked at Facebook the other day, I couldn’t believe that even the channels were arguing. These humans who claimed to be spiritual were using their words to control, condemn, and convince, instead of simply being the good example they claimed to be.

And in the interest of 2012, what happens when we get so twisted in the cybernetting of technology and artificial networking and are blasted with a solar flare and the grid goes down? How will we function at all? Is our attachment to Facebook and Twitter creating detachment from ourselves? Is networking not working? Are we distracting our brains and disconnecting our hearts? Are we losing and fragmenting our souls?

They (whoever they are) say that we will need to return to the indigenous ways, change our values, learn to communicate telepathically (because how else will you call your homies or hear the silent screams), use our intuition instead of information, exchange and barter for the things that we need (and aren’t convinced by the media that we should want or have in order to be happy, successful, or cool), learn how to plant gardens again, and actually worship the ground we walk on?

And I have another question. If we have to put on special 3D glasses to watch movies now, what dimension we are living in when we take them off?

Maybe we are the avatars, filled with our own data, encryptions, and memories, created by our souls for life on planet Earth. When we leave our bodies as we pass out of this dimension, will be looking back on a job well done? Maybe that part of ourselves has not only designed the program, but can change it at any moment in time. Maybe healing isn’t a miracle. Maybe it’s our birthright.

Now I suddenly have the urge to go sit under a tree and meditate, simplify my life, be out in nature, smell and taste things in reality versus virtuality, reboot my heart (or my microprocessor), activate my unused DNA, make friends with a Native American, and start worshipping the ground I walk on, not in the Facebook way, but in the indigenous way.

Maybe, in the beginning, the word was love. Maybe it’s time to leave the theater. Don’t forget to remove your 3D glasses.

WHAT ARE WE ASKING FOR?

2010-01-28T11:09:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I attended a very expensive workshop. The agreement for all of the participants (about 75 or more) was that everyone had to be present in order to enter the room to start each class. A few members were consistently late. Those who were angry that we couldn’t begin started to accuse and blame the others who couldn’t seem to make it on time.

Those who were late gave good excuses. Neither side heard or acknowledged the other. This continued for forty-five minutes.

We had been listening to lectures about being an example to others and yet the message had quickly been forgotten. I was reluctant to remind them, but someone close by overheard me mumbling to myself and raised her hand.

“This person has something to say!” she yelled.

And suddenly everyone stopped talking and turned to look at me. I was embarrassed and afraid to speak, but something inside of me gave me the courage that I needed.

“We have all spent a lot of money and time and made the commitment to be here this weekend. We will spend hours, each trying to convince the other that their viewpoint is right and we might never walk into that room. We need to stop talking and just be those people we are saying we are,” I said, my voice cracking as I spoke.

And something miraculous happened, but I couldn’t take credit for it. Everyone moved into the room without another single word.

I might be waxing metaphysical, but we have often been told that the kingdom of heaven is within. Then why is it that we keep going without? Why are we so intent on controlling the behavior of others instead of looking within and asking ourselves what we are saying to the world with our own actions? It should be simple. We learned it in kindergarten and slowly let it slip from our minds and hearts. Do (and don’t do) unto others.

This is a time that all of us will need to live in the integrity of our words. Our actions need to be congruent and our vision needs to be crystal clear.

Preaching, arguing, fighting, convincing, and bombing will not make a difference. Embodying what we are asking for will. Leading by example, others will follow.

If it is love we are seeking, it is time to be loving. If it is peace, we need to surrender to it. If we want to be heard, then we need to listen. If we don’t, then we will surely keep going without.

If any of us are speaking words that are not supported by our actions, if we are asking another to be the way that we are not willing to be, then perhaps we can make a small shift in our behavior today that might end up changing the world tomorrow.

I SHOULD HAVE BEEN A BAD KID

2010-01-28T09:42:00.000-08:00

When I was a baby, Mom had a hard time keeping me still, and one day I did a back flip out of her arms and landed on my head on a silver box. The doc said that I was fine. The box, however, was not, which is a testament to the hardness of my head.

I was a sleepwalker too. My Indian name was Walks with Diapers (kidding), but one night when my parents were sleeping, I managed to climb out of my bed, open the front door, and stroll off the property in only my diapers, headed toward the main drag where I would have been Gerber road kill if my psychic Mom hadn’t awakened and screamed, “The baby’s outside!” Luckily they found me in time, but they scared me awake and the diapers came in handy.

So you can imagine how traumatic it might be for a little jumping bean to get stuck in the Alice in Wonderland spinning teacup ride with her Mom, trapped in the dark, ascending structure, the Mad Hatter jumping up and down maniacally during every painful, horrifying minute. They eventually had park staff climb up and carefully usher each one of us out of the cups and back down to solid ground. Disneyland was never my cup of tea after that.

I also had a penchant for strange, wild animals. I was clumsy and fell a lot, and I was obsessed with boys in kindergarten. Other than that, from what I hear, I was a pretty good kid. For some reason, I must have had George W’s blood in my veins (Washington, not Bush) because I could not tell a lie. If I broke it or did it, I told on myself.

The adage is that if you are a pain in the ass as a kid, your parents will get you back later. Maybe it’s some kind of ancestral curse and it typically plays out in your own kids, but I never had any. But sometimes it plays out in your parents.

So it was time to start thinking about selling Mom’s house and moving her to an adult community where she could enjoy life and not have to worry about the upkeep of a fifty-seven year old home, a huge yard, cleaning, and cooking. She was hot and cold about the idea, but seemed to start embracing it. That is, until the time really came to make the move.

“I’m not ready,” she said. “I have to go through all of this stuff.”

It reminded me when my parents had tried to get me to go to bed at night. I was the negotiator. Payback, I thought.

“Five more minutes, Daddy,” I would plead. And the minutes turned into an hour, sometimes more.

That stuff included unidentifiable fragments of once operational things, old cough drops, unworn clothes, safety pins, cassette tapes, dead bugs, lone jelly beans (she liked the black licorice ones, but I couldn’t tell the beans from the bugs), broken clothes pins that she still used to hang her things outside on the line in her backyard, inherited items from siblings who had passed on, way-beyond-the-expiration-date food, dust, and a lot of memories. I understood. For me, as I got older, simpler was better. For her, all of these things were her life and we were about to take it apart and reorganize it in a new way.

Mom’s delays turned into a year, and then three. But her memory was starting to give her problems and she knew it.

“Maybe it is time,” she said one day. And as I choked back the tears, I agreed. Sometimes daughters know best and there is that tipping point when the parent becomes the child, but this was one of the most difficult things that I have ever had to do, harder than even walking away from a romantic relationship.

So I went out and I bought dots, lots of them. Red dots. I told her that she could put them on all of the stuff that she absolutely couldn’t live without and we would take that to her new home and she could come back at her leisure to go through the rest of the stuff, and we would sell, donate, or toss anything else that she didn’t want. It sounded like a great idea to me, but it was like losing control of her life to her.

And the long ordeal began. We found a place, the best and most highly recommended in the area. It was so nice that I was ready to move in. Three squares a day and a housekeeper? Sign me up.

Mom had loved my little apartment, so I fixed up her new place in the same way and had it all ready when she walked in. Lights, candles, action. She loved it that first night, but soon afterwards, things changed.

“When can I go home?” she asked.

“Mom, you live here now. We’re selling the house, remember?” I said.

She scowled at me and her mouth turned into a straight line. I was scared. “You told me I could go back there. I don’t like it here. These people are all sick and old and I’m BORED.”

When I was a baby and they took my bottle away, Mom said I did so well with the transition.

“Bottle all gone, Mommy!” I proudly proclaimed.

But I only had my bottle for a few years and she had her house for fifty-seven, and I realized that there was no comparison. I had moved eighteen times during those years, so I obviously welcomed change, but change frightened her and it made her mad. Damn mad. So mad that I began to wonder if there was a daughter protection program.

And I began to second guess myself in much the same way that I did when I used to come to that point in my relationships with men when it was time for a change, but my little voice kept telling me that this was the right thing to do. She needed to be safe and she needed available and qualified medical care.

Mom might have been losing her memory, but she still had her super-powers. She convinced an unsuspecting old codger who still had his driver’s license and who fell under her spell, to take her for a ride in his fastback Mustang, a ride right back to her house which we happened to be dismantling at the time. She looked like she was ready to explode, but luckily I had a handsome friend helping me at the time and she fell under his spell for a few hours, and we sent Mr. Mustang packing while we did the same.

There were times when I went back to the house alone during this process and as I walked through the rooms, the dust covered memories ran through my mind. I saw the holes from my Dad’s tie rack and I remembered all of the times he had yanked it out in anger, disappearing for two or three days until he calmed down, until the last time which was the last time. He never returned. Mom said he was going to come back, but he ended up dying instead at the young age of forty-four.

Tears started to run down my face and mingle with the fifty-seven year old dust.

“I miss you, Daddy,” I cried. “I wish you were here.”

Now I know why she had been so resistant to leaving the house. The walls were speaking to me now, in much the same way that I am sure they did to her each night for all of those years.
Then all of a sudden, I felt the urge to turn my head and my eyes landed on a drawer in the hutch in the living room. It must have been that little voice of mine (or his), but I opened it and pulled out a manila envelope that was marked “Personal,” but it wasn’t in either of my parents’ handwriting.

I didn’t even look, but reached inside blindly, not knowing what I might find. And when I opened my eyes, my heart skipped a beat. It was a card from my Dad, an Easter card he had written when the Beatles were my favorite band.

"Happy Easter to Robyn Beatle from Daddy Beatle. I’ll always love you."

That card had to be hidden for over forty years, in fact I don’t ever remember seeing it at all. And all of a sudden I felt cocooned in indescribable warmth and I cried for two hours straight. I could feel him. He was there with me. I also found a little card that he had given Mom the day I was born that said, “Glad it’s a girl!” I had always wondered about that too.

I suddenly felt stronger and as I went through more drawers and more boxes, I started to get to know my Mom again. I found self-help books from years past, incense, candles we had made together and recipes I wished she could still make for me, exercise videos, knitting projects, goofy family photos and beautiful portraits, old Sinatra records, pay stubs from the jobs that she had, and more. That was what was bothering her now. All of this represented her passion and purpose and now she had to let it all go.

I started to feel as though this was a rite of passage for both of us and I thanked God that I was able to find pieces of my Mom’s life while she was still alive and was able to talk about it with me. There was no way that I could have done this had she passed away.

Compassion flooded my heart and my soul. At first, it felt a lot like pain, but I feel pain in my stomach and I sometimes double over to try to get it to stop.

Compassion hurts good and I felt it in my heart as it ripped apart at the seams of my psyche. This was cathartic.

So when Mom tells me that her bed isn’t her bed and her clothes aren’t her clothes and that everyone is taking her things (because she can’t find them), I realize that perhaps she is stuck in the teacups of her own reality now, and know that somehow, someday, someone will gently escort her back to safe and solid ground as they did for me that day amongst the jelly beans, bugs, and Beatles.

SOUND BITES!

2010-01-03T21:48:00.000-08:00

Maybe there is something wrong with me. I am sure that there are a lot of folks who might attest to this.

But I am sitting here in my Los Gatos studio listening to my thirty year old (or older) refrigerator compressor rattling on and off every five minutes (blowing its ancient dust all over my floor), yet my apartment manager doesn’t think there is anything wrong with it. He is one of those people who think it’s me, but I have told him that he needs to think about sleeping ten feet away from this thing every night. He says I’m “noise-sensitive” and without my knowledge, he put sticky rubber strips under all of the items on top of my refrigerator because he said that was what was making it rattle, but it still does. He and his wife announced that they just bought a new refrigerator. I’ll take their old one. I bet it’s quieter than my Hotpoint from Hell.

My neighbor is idling his motorcycle right under my unit (which makes me want to idle his unit) and as I write this, another neighbor, not even in my complex, is playing his surround-sound so loud that his place is shaking and there is a metallic plate rocking against his outside wall which is making my place vibrate like a 450 square foot pocket rocket (not that I own one, but maybe I should.) My life is surround sound and I am beginning to sound like an old person. Hell, I am an old person and I think I’ve earned some peace and quiet.

I wonder why I haven’t strangled my neighbors, put sticky rubber over my apartment manager’s mouth and stuck him in the refrigerator. It’s also a wonder why I haven’t already gone mad, or perhaps I have. Maybe it’s time to move to the country. I would rather listen to the wind and hear cows moo and roosters crow.

Maybe this is one of those not so subtle problems with modern society. We are assaulted by a constant audio attack on our nervous systems with alarm clocks (instead of roosters), garbage trucks, sirens, car alarms, motorcycles, barking dogs (they had better not live on the ranch I’m moving to), and loud music in coffee shops, restaurants, and malls (does this make us digest or spend more?) not to mention cell phones ringing everywhere and the people talking loudly on them in the restaurants and malls over the deafening din and ear-splitting acoustics. I quit the gym because of the blasting racket of rock music and racket balls blasting against the walls (say that one real fast), and the testosterone grunts and heavy breathing accompanying the heavy metal. A guy I dated would wear headphones when he was on the treadmill at the gym. He played what he called “angry white music” so that he could get a better workout. Huh? He was from New York. That might explain it.

So is it my age? Hearing is supposed to get worse as we get older, isn’t it? Eh? My ears ring now, but I like it. It’s a gentle hum inside my own head as opposed to the onslaught of artificial cacophony (except for the barking dog up the street, which, as you know, I still think is an android, and the humans with their cellular appendages and staccato chatter, not breathing between their endless words.)

When I had my place in Monterey, I dated a guy who told me that it was too quiet there and that he couldn’t sleep. Come to think of it, he was from New York too. So after a while, I agreed that he couldn’t sleep…there, with me, and I don’t date New Yorkers anymore.

Well, I’m crotchety and I’m ready for bed. I have my Ambien and my earplugs and where is that elevator music when I need it?

Third floor, lingerie. Is this where they sell the pocket rockets?

ARE WE THE ANTI-CHRIST WE MOST FEAR?

2009-12-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

“Mommy, Mommy! Come and see!”

She had her hands full with an exuberant eight year old.

“Look!” I screamed, as I pointed up to the sky.

“What, Honey?” she asked.

“Can’t you see the distance between the stars?” I asked. “LOOK!”

I was frustrated. I could tell by the look on her face that she couldn’t. I had been stargazing again, something I did regularly with my blanket on the back steps of our house. But this particular night, something had changed for me. In one nanosecond, my vision had shifted and I had my first glimpse of infinity with no limitations. Mom shook her head, turned, and walked back into the house.

I had done a back flip out of her arms when I was a baby and landed on a silver box. The box was severely dented, but the doctor said that I was fine. Maybe that bump on the head was a blessing and perhaps that is why I saw things a little differently as a child. And I always felt temporary.

I always had a fascination with the moon, the stars, and the sky and I seemed to know things that no kid my age had business knowing. I was fascinated by the paranormal and was reading Psycho-Cybernetics at sixteen.

Mom and I had walked through the doors of many a church, chapel, and tabernacle as I was growing up. She was looking for something to give her peace of mind, I’m sure, but I somehow knew that it wasn’t in any of those buildings, or in the pages of a book. No priest, bishop, or pope would be able to change my mind.

“Our brains are limited,” I would tell her. She looked at me as if I were someone else’s child.

“We can’t understand something infinite, so how can we understand God?”

As a child, I would debate with Mormon ministers (and win.) And I would squirm in the pews of the Catholic church as I looked at Jesus hanging on the cross.

I was confused as I watched the parishioners sitting quietly in their piety and then running each other over as they tried to leave the parking lot. I wondered why nuns were so mean and why everything was a sin. It isn’t easy for any kid, let alone one who fell on her head.

But over the years, it didn’t get any easier for me. I met Christians who cheated on their spouses and chastised me for reading my horoscope. I watched the news and wondered why people were killing each other in the name of religion. It didn’t make sense to a kid and it doesn’t make sense to me now. How could that guarantee someone a place in heaven? There is no “them.” There is only “us.”

Something was wrong and incongruent. Wasn’t the Bible written by humans? How could they really know what or who God was? They were limited. I knew this because I had heard that all of us (Moses included) only use a tiny portion of our brains.

Then I started reading about Jesus. Wow. This was someone I could relate to. And I must have been reading a different bible because I was really excited. He could do anything. He performed miracles! And he told us that we could too! So why would anyone want to keep him hanging on a cross in a church? I wanted to take him down and play with him.

“Greater things than these shall ye do,” he said. And I would always remember those words. I much preferred that line of thinking rather than feeling like a sinner when I did just about anything that kids do.

Years later, when I was working at a cosmetic counter at Macy’s and we were expecting our “gifts with purchase” and my manager was having a meltdown because they hadn’t arrived, I thought of what Jesus had said.

“They are here,” I said confidently, remembering the loaves and the fishes parable.

“No, they are NOT here!” she wailed. “We checked the stock room and the warehouse and they are NOT here!”

Anxious customers were swarming the counter and I just smiled. “They are here,” I repeated. I could see them in my mind.

She glared at me, but as she turned around, one of the warehouse guys walked in with the precious cargo of boxes stacked up in his arms. There they were.

“But….” She stuttered, dumfounded. “How did you know?”

“Loaves and fishes,” I said, as I started to unpack the gifts, still grinning. She didn’t get it. It’s manifestation in the simplest sense and we could have learned this stuff two thousand years ago.

Why are we so surprised when there is a miraculous healing? We should be shocked when we get ill. Jesus healed the sick and he did it often. We were distinctly told that we were made in “His image.” Duh. God’s image. It isn’t rocket science, people.

It’s kindergarten, Golden rule, treat others the way we want to be treated stuff. Simple and childsplay.

In fact, we are told to become like little children. Do you know why babies cry when they arrive here? Because all of their needs were met in the womb. They didn’t have to talk or scream. Their host (ess) was divinely telepathic.

Separation from the host is painful. Think about it. And our pain is precisely about that as adults: separation from the host. Not just our mothers, but where we came from before we entered her body and became the nucleus of our own little universe. And now we (humanity) appears to have a deadly auto-immune disorder and is turning on itself, destroying precious parts of itself like vicious little Pac-men.

I loved the Book of Revelations and the stories of the anti-Christ when I was little. It frightened most people, but it was my favorite book of all. And now, with 2012 fast approaching, ancient prophecies and Hollywood movies feeding the apocalyptic flame, I think I know why it was. It was the final curtain and this bright, shining soul named Jesus who came to earth to teach us the very basics of life, help us perform miracles, show us how to understand infinity and transcend death two thousand years ago was giving us all of the clues and answers that we need to get through it all.

It is so simple. Why do we need to complicate things? Why do we need to limit and confuse the things we don’t understand? Now is the time to put these teachings into action. We are slow learners, but there is still time.

A question came to mind recently. I’m not sure why, but I was able to answer it very quickly. It was this. Would you give up your life if it meant that the rest of the world would live? My answer was yes. It was the lesson of compassion that I had learned from mankind’s amazing teacher. I never even realized that it was living deep inside my heart. Maybe my soul is finally outgrowing my skin.

We stuffed Jesus, the man who taught us everything we need to know, between the pages of a book, hanging him up on a cross instead of playing with him and learning from him. Every time we kill in the name of God, hurt one another, scare the hell out of our children by calling them sinners and making them squirm in their pews and wet their beds with nightmares about multiple sixes, discriminate against each other, shut down our natural state of compassion and unity, exclude instead of include, refuse to believe in miracles and heal ourselves, and realize that we are infinite beings, we should wonder….

Are WE the anti-Christ we most fear?

TERROR AT 30,000 FEET

2009-11-07T20:40:00.000-08:00

One of my readers wrote to me the other day and told me to stick to my dating stories and not rant about NASA.

But every once in a while, I think something is more important than dating when someone decides to bomb the moon or someone dies and I have to attend the funeral. And although losing a dear family friend is tragic and heartbreaking, it forces me to take a break from the adventure and insanity of coupulation (my word.)

So I was off to Arizona for the funeral that turned out to be more of a celebration and drunkfest which my friend Carl would have wanted.

I could hear the words Carl would be saying in his southern drawl that I always loved hearing. “I’m gonna go run interference for ya’ll.”

While I was in Arizona, I decided to take a short, but overdue vacation to Sedona, a New Age mecca for seekers and girls who have dated too much.

I have always been a spiritual person, albeit a bit sacrilegious. I was raised Catholic and was taken to church in my mother’s arms. She couldn’t fault me for saying “Answer da phone, Mommy” when the altar boys kept ringing the bell, but when I was old enough to know better, I was chastised for laughing hysterically with my Dad in the pew. He stuffed his handkerchief in his mouth to stop himself and I got the you-are-going-to-hell-look from Mom. I guess that is why I had to write all of my sins down for my first confession which included three pages of gum-chewing, bad thoughts, disobeying my parents, and more stupid things that kids do.

The priest behind the sliding window heard the papers rustling and my voice shaking and finally asked, “Are you reading this?”

“Yes, because I can’t remember all the bad things I did,” I said.

He laughed too and told me to go and say ten Hail Marys and three Our Fathers. And I felt a little better, and although I left that indoctrination behind, the threat of going to hell (or worse, purgatory) always loomed in the corners of my mind.

So when I got to my gate before my flight and saw the nun sitting in the corner smiling that I-know-who-you-are smile at me, my first thought was, “Oh crap. I’m going to die.”

My second thought was that my cholesterol wasn’t going to kill me after all, but that instead I wouldn’t die clutching a bag of stale pretzels.

I took a deep breath and boarded the plane anyway and I arrived safely. False alarm, I guess.
Sedona was great. I was hoping to see a spaceship, but no cigars (or flying discs.) As I got to the gate for my return flight, I looked over and saw a priest. Now what are the odds? I was hoping that he wouldn’t see me with a very large crystal hanging around my neck. And although I rarely showed cleavage anymore, I was wearing a keyhole shirt that happened to bring a whole lot of focus to it. Great. Hell awaits me for sure.

But I had to come home. So I took another deep breath and boarded again with my Barbie-bag, carry-on and found my seat. I watched as the other fliers stuffed their oversized bags into the overhead compartments. What the hell do people put in there? I was sure that there were a few bodies up there.

So, there I was on this big plane with lots of seats and here comes the priest.

Oh please don’t sit by me, I prayed. (Yes, I still pray.)

But he did. Right smack next to me. And then another priest came and sat right next to him.
So it’s me and two priests and now I’m sure I’m going to die.

Father-whoever looks over at me and smiles. He has beautiful, liquidy blue eyes that distract me for a minute until I start my avoiding-purgatory-mantra, “He’s a priest, Robyn, he’s a priest.”

I’m not-so-nonchalantly trying to yank up my shirt so that the keyhole is up to my throat and my cleavage disappears, but it isn’t working. And even if it did, my multi-colored crystal is screaming blasphemy.

But he has an iPod and a computer and he has OCD. Seriously. His co-priest is sitting quietly as the plane takes off, but my blue-eyed high-tech buddy is making the sign of the cross after everything he does as I start to shake.

The seat belt sign goes on and the captain’s voice comes over the loudspeaker.

“Well, folks. We have some turbulence.” Big surprise, I think. Yep, we’re all gonna die. I’ll be up there with Carl soon running interference.

The stews have to be seated and they aren’t happy about it. No cocktails for me. So I start scribbling notes for my next article to take my mind off crashing.

“Are you a writer?” the blue-eyed priest asks.

“Uh, yes. How could you tell?” I responded. “And I’m a sinner.” No I really didn’t say that, but I thought it.

“You look like one,” he said, grinning. Yeah, right. “What do you write?”

So we started to chat. Priest number two never said a word the entire flight, but my new buddy talked a lot and I found out where he was from and what he did besides pray for our evil souls. And I disclosed that I write a silly column about dating and aging which, if this plane went down, I would never be doing again.

“There are no accidents, you know,” he said, and if my hands weren’t so busy yanking at the keyhole of my shirt, I would have made a few OCD signs of the cross myself. I still remembered how to do it.

It was a white-knuckle flight for sure, but we finally landed safely on the ground. Carl might have been disappointed that I wouldn’t be joining him so soon.

A few months later, I was headed to England to investigate crop circles. A very pleasant passenger sitting next to me started talking about New Age folks who thought that spaceships would come and rescue us in the last days on earth. I was silently hoping that was true. And that if we didn’t go with Jesus, we would all go to hell. But what if Jesus is manning the spaceship?

That Little Voice: You need to take out that list of sins from long ago and add two more, crystals and cleavage. You’ll never learn.

ALCHEMISTRY AND THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK (or How to Find Something That Hurts Without Really Trying)

2009-11-07T20:16:00.005-08:00

I once attended a writer’s conference in Maui. There had to be over a thousand people there, half of them men. And I was attracted to one of them. Just one: the most dysfunctional, admittedly maladjusted, bipolar one of them. I could feel it when he walked into the room. He wasn’t overwhelmingly attractive, but he was wildly intelligent and a great writer. He didn’t use his real name when he wrote which made him all the more mysterious and deadly. There was just something about him. I had found the needle in the haystack and got stuck with it. I had found something that hurt without even trying. Call it crazy. I tended to call it chemistry (and fireworks that burned.)

So I am determined to figure this out. Is chemistry a physical attraction or is it more? It obviously doesn’t always work to our benefit. In fact, sometimes it hurts (a lot.) Is it real or is it imagined? Does he (or she) remind us of Daddy (or Mommy?) Are we finishing (or unfinishing) some business in our past?

If I could bottle and sell the formula, I certainly would. I don’t believe that there is just one person out there for each of us and we obviously aren’t all attracted to the same type of partner. I want to break the code, but maybe it’s different for all of us.

I once had a friend named Sue. She had a face like Nicole Kidman (and the body of roughly one and a half Nicoles.) I didn’t think there was much she wouldn’t put in her mouth, but evidently there was.

One day we were sitting outside having a beer at a restaurant. As she looked around at the guys there, she admitted that she wasn’t attracted to men her age, which was mid-forties at the time. She liked them younger, much younger.

Sue looked over at me as she mused and said, “Think about it….”

“What?” I asked.

“Could you put it in your mouth?” she queried, as she casually sipped her beer and I spit mine out.

“Well, just think about it….” she said, as she surveyed the surrounding area.

And I did. For a long time….years, in fact. That damn question never left my mind when I was looking at a potential mate. I think I hated her for that.

It might be a little graphic, but it made sense. How intimate could I imagine myself being with this person? Could I get past the first kiss? Typically I can tell if a man tries to hold my hand and my reaction is to pull away. Sue had her own (oral) litmus test for chemistry. I suppose that we all do.

I once ended up working for a company run by a guy I had dated twenty years before. The chemistry between us had always been hot, but after all that time I thought I was safe. I wasn’t. It was palpable and everyone else could feel it too. I couldn’t even be in the same room with him. He might have lost some hair and gained a wife in the years that had passed, but he still had “it.” And I still wanted it.

So what happens when chemistry is there in the beginning and then disappears? What makes it go away? If so, where does it go? Does it come back and if so, how long does it take? And what if it isn’t there and then just sneaks up on you? Is it timing or some sort of magical, electromagnetic frequencies? I have had this happen too. Or is it some sort of karmic, spiritual resonance?

It isn’t just about looks, at least for me. It’s something else. It makes my skin buzz and I feel more alive. And I know that I need to have it in a relationship. When I look back over the years, there isn’t a particular type that generated the effect every time. It doesn’t make sense.

A client of mine once made a comment about one of the men I had been engaged to.

“But he’s short and chubby,” he said. “And he’s bald.”

And he was all that. But there was chemistry. Not in the beginning, and I did remember distinctly not (really not) liking him when we first met. So maybe the pendulum could swing in the other direction. Who else did I despise? Was the lack of affect (and flatlining) the indicator that chemistry could never exist?

I want to like and respect my partner, but I also want to want to tear his clothes off. I want to want him to hold my hand. I’m willing to exert the effort, mend my ways, be less analytical, and make promises to God if I could just meet him. Is that asking too much? Just shoot me with that thunderbolt! I’m right here!

But I don’t have the time to waste on another unhealthy relationship or with someone who doesn’t have my best interest in mind so I’ve dodged a few thunderbolts lately. I’ve felt the chemistry and kept on moving. I need integrity, fidelity, companionship, and love, but sometimes it seems like a tall order.

I know that there has to be more and I am willing to wait, but I still wonder. Who are those lucky folks who find chemistry with a “healthy” partner or do all intensely magnetic relationships make us work a little harder for them?

That Little Voice: Chemistry isn’t always a good thing, but sometimes there is a powerful magnetism inherent in the dark side of a person. It’s an intoxicating, primal thing like embracing your shadow and can be just as empty as you are thrust forward by some unseen force toward an elusive sense of completeness (fodder for your next book….Holographs for Dummies.) So carry a big umbrella or stay out of the storm, and find someone who you can actually hold his own, you, and a conversation too.

TIME, SHELF LIFE, AND OTHER EVIL MONSTERS

2009-10-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

Time is a funny thing. It means something different to everyone. Some of us spend it while others kill it. Some of us try to save it, while those of us who are coming to grips about our own mortality are trying not to waste it.

Sitting in the waiting room of my doctor’s office recently (which seems to be a frequent event these days), I noticed an elderly couple sitting across from me. They were holding hands and he was playfully swinging hers back and forth. They looked like they were both in their eighties and it was obvious that they had been quite the handsome duo in their earlier years.

“It’s so great that you are still holding hands,” I said.

“It keeps her from slapping me,” the man replied as he grinned at me, his sense of humor still very much alive.

“Wow!” I said. “Can I sit next to you guys? Maybe some of that luck will rub off on me.”

Was it really luck, fate, hard work, commitment, or just Cupid with a good aim? They looked quite devoted and it appeared that time had treated them both well. I started asking myself, how is it that some people find the love of their life and others of us don’t? And how do we know when we are spending time with someone or wasting it?

Shortly after crossing the forty yard line of my life, I found myself needing a swift kick and some professional assistance to end a relationship that was going nowhere. I often asked myself where that somewhere was located where relationships were supposed to lead and how do we know when we arrived?

I had spent two carefree years laughing and dancing with a handsome, sexy, ten-years-younger, but emotionally ambivalent Peruvian Ph.D. It was on again, off again. He didn’t want kids one day and the next day he did. He loved me, he loved me not.

Dr. A (let’s call him), and my counselor of choice, peered up at me over his glasses and asked, “How old are you?”

“I’m forty (something),” I mumbled.

“What do you want?” he queried.

“I want a serious, long-term relationship,” I replied.

As he held up his thumb and index finger to his forehead in the shape of an “L” in reference to my partner (or me) he asked, “How much time do you really have to waste?”

Call it. I looked at my watch. Time of death: 9:30AM. In Dr. A’s office, my relationship was over. Those were the words I needed and although I had read countless magazine articles about how a woman over forty had a better chance at being hit by a bus than being asked for her hand or anything else, I held my ground and gave my salsa-boyfriend the boot. Thanks to Dr. A, my time had just become more valuable.

Now in my fifties, after many meetings and partings behind me, I sometimes ask myself if I made a mistake by passing up certain relationships with nice men and even refusing offers of marriage. I think I was passed over (or passed out) when the homing gene was being distributed because I never felt the urgency to formally and legally coupulate (my word) that some women did. I wanted a relationship, but I wasn’t in much of a hurry to get married back then or pop out a mini-me.

I did seem to get a double dose of the female analysis gene though and as the years went by, I wondered. What if it’s me? Will there be a next one if I let this one go? What if I’m wrong? And will that bus hit me before I find true love? And shouldn't I be going somewhere?

I seemed to be the victim of the ruse of time, that silent enemy who lurks behind the last page on the calendar and pops up like an evil Jack-in-the-Box, smiling sardonically as another year slides past. Gotcha (again)!

Just for grins, I looked up expiration date at Wikipedia online: Could refer to shelf life of a grocery item; See distressed inventory. It could also refer to humans. (Do we have an invisible date stamp too?)

Dr. Phil has it down to the number of days we have left. Thanks, Phil. This distresses me. My biological clock has stopped ticking, but now I hear the distant chime of a grandfather (or grandmother) clock. Or maybe it’s more like that incessant beeping on “24” reminding me that time is running out.

How do we stay inspired if we are expiring? How do we keep our sense of emotional and physical health along with our sense of humor? And if we are single at this age, how do we find love in time and get to that somewhere we are supposed to be going in our relationships? I suddenly had a horrible vision of a sixty-something woman with her skirt hiked up her thigh, thumbing a passing bus for a ride.

Those of us who are baby boomers and are unwilling to crawl back into the cradle and pull the covers over our heads, need to figure out how to live and date in this gray area. It doesn’t matter if we are starting over and new to the scene, single by force or divorce and daily belting out a tear-filled version of “All by Myself” in the shower, or a well-practiced single by choice and like it that way, things are more challenging now.

I don’t believe that we were meant to live life alone. We are physical beings created with parts that fit beautifully together yet somehow we don’t seem to be plug-and-play. Some of those parts don’t look so good or work so well anymore. Hair falls out where it should be and grows where it shouldn’t (this applies to both sexes). Men worry about balding and performance, and women are obsessed with menopause, wrinkles, and sagging, but I happen to think that expiring might be more fun if it’s shared.

Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and sneak up on my refrigerator. I open the door real fast just to make sure that that the dates on my food aren’t expiring while I’m sleeping. Then I sneak a peek in my bathroom mirror on my way back to bed to make sure that I'm not.

That Little Voice: I guess you can panic, become desperate, and let your date stamp (or “L” sign) flash in neon lights. Or you can relax, enjoy, and have a sense of humor and a large dose of acceptance in the process of living (and learning) and dating at this age. A little reassurance that you are still beautiful will go a long way. A compliment lasts a lot longer than a vial of Botox (plus it’s cheaper, smiling is nice, it helps to move your mouth when you talk, and you should avoid sucking your meals through a straw as long as you can). And whether a man is packing a pocket of blue pills or just happy to see you, I think you still might be in for a good time. Oh, and throw away anything that really starts to stink.

I HEAR VOICES

2009-09-16T08:18:00.000-07:00

I hear voices. Well, it’s more like just one little voice. I'm sure it won't be long before I start seeing dead people.

No. I'm not Sybill and I don't have a split personality. And I have never had imaginary friends. I'm not sure if it's God I hear, a little angel, my Higher Self, or a voice from another dimension. It speaks even when I don't want to hear it and louder when I try to ignore it. And I typically do until it's too late, at which point it says, “I told you so” while I’m putting ice on my head after banging it against the wall. As you will come to know, my little voice has a caustic sense of humor, but looking back, it always seemed to know better.

I think we all have our own little voice. If we stop talking so much, we can hear it. It is (almost) drowned in our daily distractions, but has its own determined desperation that hangs on. Sometimes it is polite and stays quiet until we shut up and at other times it screams out and scares us into listening.

Maybe our hearing starts getting worse as we get older for a good reason…so that we can start listening. I remember looking in the mirror a few years ago and for a minute, I saw myself much younger. I kept doing the I-Dream-of-Jeannie blink to try to make myself stick that way. It didn’t work. But I started thinking…if an older and wiser Robyn (which might be questionable, so let's just say more experienced) could go back in time and tell this sweet, naïve girl what was going to happen, who she would meet, why she should run the other way when she was so wildly and magnetically attracted to someone, and how to avoid falling on her face or banging her head against the wall, would she listen? Probably not.

Would you?

That Little Voice: Good question. Let’s see how they answer it. Oh, and nice try with the Jeannie wink.