Crow's shiny things

Sell fish

2010-05-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

What does selfish mean? Is it a good or bad thing to be selfish? Is that what you really mean, that I'm selfish?

I am selfish. I want, like a child wants...there are some things I can't really hide, but have to figure out how to accept and use. It feels alot easier when I accept those things, instead of fighting them.

I am selfish. I am selfish and I can't figure out how to be anything else. When i do...when I try to change myself to suit others then everything goes wrong.

I'm old..how could I be so stupid all the time?

I can't write

I don't know what to say.

I loved this.

2009-05-09T21:16:00.001-07:00

Adelene sent me this link. http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/352241.html

2009-05-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

During a PaB meeting I told this story:

It may take some persistance to meet and understand that favorite grandma. When i was very little..i hated one of mine. It took my whole life so far to get to know her..but about 10 years ago..at about 30...i learned who she was as a human being..she has fed me as a human being since then. Our compassion for each other has grown and grown..and both our souls are lighter for it.

We just became entangled for no apparant reason and leaned to hear each
other for what we were.

What was important to me in the story was that it wasn't a story of either of us changing to become someone different. She was still pretty much the same woman, and I was pretty much the same, too. She still yelled, complained about people and thought women had specific roles they should fill. I was still an ardent feminist of the kind that thinks women and men can choose their roles; still a lesbian; and still self rightous about both things.

As a result of our compassion for each other both of us HAVE changed. I'm not so self rightous about my beliefs. She has invited my partner to come stay at her house with me. She respects my opinion and I hers. From dislike and disinterest we have moved to a deep love. She is the same; I am the same. We know each other for what we are, "good" and "bad", "socially acceptable" and not. What seems to have happened, is that we learned to listen instead of trying to change the other..just to see clearly.

I believe that Love and compassion are NOT about looking for the good in others. It's about looking carefully, closely at what the other is, seeing it clearly, accepting it as it is.

I know..you're thinking..what if it is EVIL! I don't have an answer. I really don't. Still, I think compassion doesn't exactly ask us to decide if something is evil or not, wrong or not. That's a different kind of knowing, a different kind of choosing to accept or not.

Andy and me

2009-05-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

I was at grown up party on a veranda dancing with a 2 year old. A little girl came on the veranda and noticed me dancing.

I left for a while to tour the home, and when I returned the little girl homed in on me..you know how it is with little kids sometimes? They look at you then narrow their eyes a little and march bent at the waist just slightly forward...like little adorable sharks. This one..had obviously mistaken me for another child. Now...I'm 5'6" tall, and certainly do not look like a child..I'm not sure how this happened.

"What's your name?"

"Corvi. What's yours?"

"Andy. How old are you?"

"41, how old are you?"

"3"

"Well, that's a little difference in age" (I think I was trying to say...hey..kid...I'm a grown up!!!)

"Well, I'll be 4 de 1 soon."

I smiled...and laughed...and...she pulled out the big guns...a leaf!!! "I'll tickle you!!!" She said!

So I ran!!!! fasT Fast!!! But I could not outrun the tickle monster. Must have been the high heels. We ran around that party for an hour...

That was fun.

2009-04-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

I was cuddled by sting rays yesterday. They are beautiful, soft...they feel like wet velvet. At first we were shy of each other..I was allowed to brush their wings with a fingertip...some of them...some never allowed me to touch them, though they came close enough to see and smell me.

I waited, listened to each ray by watching them move. Each had it's own story to tell. There were different kinds, and even within the kinds there were differences of size, shape, color, scarring. As I lay my hand in the water, they chose how close to come, and if they came close..how to approach.

One kept coming by...stroking my fingers and standing still as I stroked her wing, she kept trying to approach my flat hand face on: nose, mouth and eyes ...but I was too shy at first to let her. Too frightened that she might bite me. I jerked away, and she swam off the first few times she tried. Finally, after she petted my hand several times, swimming not only under my fingers but under my palm and sitting there..I relaxed. She swam up and faced me, and began to explore my fingers with her eyes, and "nose". A few more passes round and she began to swim under and over my hand...tasting it perhaps with the mouth on the underside of her body..cuddling it, and swimming against it. Finally, she began to tickle herself against my fingers...stroking them with her back then flicking her wings against them and jetting away.

Another decided to move himself between my palm and the side of the tank, swimming tight against my palm for minutes at a time.

Another kept coming close, and flicking my fingers with her wing..unwilling to come closer than that.

They each had a personality, a history of their own. I don't know what they were feeling, but I know we came into a relationship, whether I understand it or not. I wish I could go talk to them more often, understand them better. Hear them more clearly.

They are beautiful.

Meadow vision from PaB 3/15/09 7am

2009-03-16T08:14:00.000-07:00

a vision of myself in a meadow laying down, becoming the meadow, decomposing the worms crawling in and out of the lifeless crow. I feel delighted as meadow, grateful to be aware of myself as it instead of crow, flying apart from it.

I am meadow whether i am flying or not, lifeless or full of cackles. I am meadow and moving still, arising still, patterns forming and new patterns forming in the interplay between all the little bits of me that think they are themselves. Each worm, each crow, each flower thinks it is itself and i know that it is meadow.

An accidental vision of me seeing being seeing.

a little gratitude

2009-02-06T18:42:00.000-08:00

This week, I've been a little nervous about looking too close, and find that even when I do the nine seconds I'm "distracted". I loooooook...feeeel...allooooow..but at a distance from myself, not with the sense of "now" and "real" that I'm used to experiencing.

Today, I looked, I felt, allowed and it was all there again, reminding me of what I had missed. Oddly enough, I DO miss it when it's not there...even though my practice of the nine seconds is usually rare and random. I think that means I've grown quite attached to being able to grab that experience when I want. :-)

Thanks to Sweetie for love and patience.

The Pit

2008-12-12T16:09:00.000-08:00

The Pit Metaphore...(see Adelene's blog for the discussion).http://angelshelper81.livejournal.com/

the thing on my mind right now... that keeps coming up...is allowing thoughts to surface and then move on. In talking over the past few months with Gaya, Fael, Adelene, Pema and now Pila...I have seen that it would be useful to do this..and that it is a large part of meditation.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be in my skill set. What is in my skill set is eliding thoughts, supressing thoughts, beating back thoughts with a stick (or pillow) if necessary. As I said to Adelene...I started early and kept adding skills to my repetoire.

Which leads to the following: Depression, anxiety, innattention to my own pain and discomfort, fugue states and difficulty sitting still..not "doing" something. All of which make it hard to care for one's self properly. Which can piss one off at one's self...which can lead to Depression, anxiety...oof.

This is Not Good. or at least...not working.

So..today I am moving my mind toward practicing this each day. Somehow, some where, practicing allowing of my thoughts instead of stuffing.

Thank you to the friend who spoke of allowing the other day, and who is bravely allowing what seem to me difficult thoughts, and questions to arise. I hope I will be that brave.

More about change

2008-12-01T14:52:00.000-08:00

1) Adelene mentioned something that rings true...Brain bits will stop torturing you when they are assured that they are heard (how I remember it, not necessarily what she said or meant).

2) I've done alot of changing since February. (I'm terribly grateful for it) The most important things are that while I still am not sleeping 8 hours a night..I'm not waking up anxious. I feel much more at home with myself, less itchy in my "self" and in my body. I'm much more willing to allow than to overthink a problem. I'm not better at anything, I don't think...but I'm happier to be flawed than I was.

3)I think that the 9 seconds have helped..in the little bits I've done them..but more than that it's been the attitudes and ideas I've taken onboard that have been helpful. Poor Sweetie has been trying and trying for years to teach me things I couldn't hear...and this crowd has been able to explain.

Start where you are

2008-11-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

http://mantic-angel.livejournal.com/127217.html A wonderful treatise on loving one's self.

I was talking to a new friend at PaB yesterday, about love...what it is? He said...I rejoice in the success of those I love and sympathize when they are sad. I'm not jealous, don't think...they deserve what they got.

So I started thinking...what does it mean to love myself? or to not love myself?
Do I rejoice when I succeed? or do I poo poo the success, calling it luck? Do I sympathize with my sadness or decide that I should have done something differently, I got what I deserved?

Yesterday..I was sad and I started to get mad at myself for it then I thought...wait, I'm going to try something new. So I told myself..it's ok to be sad, like I was talking to a friend.

Okay.

2008-10-26T15:27:00.000-07:00

Thinking about overload and spaces made. I know for those who have always meditated that the idea of space between is just normal. For me, it's not something I have considered.

I think, though, at times in my life I made space in my own ways.

Later I started filling space with anything I could find, fearing it.

Here, now, I am interested and willing to make a little space again: have done, actually. Just a little.

It IS frightening, though, that space. I know that what I have feared is the noises that try to crowd in where space is. I know that I'm still scared of those noises: anxiety, depression, fear, anger, embarrassment, painful memories, anticipations. I have been good at filling with sand where those things might crop up, but they have become insistent again.

So, with the patient (and sometimes impatient) tutoring of my SL and RL mentors..I am opening little spaces, and watching those things (mostly) rise and fall away instead of hitting a wall where they batter at me. It IS working better.

Still...there is alot of fear, alot of resistance. I am glad to remember that there is no hurry, that I have time, that there is no deadline.

more little shiny things

2008-09-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

I bought a pair of boots, and wear them almost all the time, they came from a store called Shiny Things.

I am ecstatic and sad at the same time.

My life in SL has grown rich and richer, my life in rl has always been a little richer than I can stand.

I wake up at four in the morning, panicked for no reason several times a week.

Change Is hard, Change is...

2008-08-15T18:46:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it is the right thing to do.

2008-07-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

"I don't know if it is the right thing to do." Eye listens.
Corvi dances and sings and thinks: "I don't know if it is the right thing to do..."Crow looks at the paper this is written on and starts to peck at it...r is gone. i is eaten. g is pecked. h disappears. t is punched. Crow tilts her head and looks at this paper again. "I don't know if it is the 00000 thing to do." Satisfied, her head bobs bobs. She preens, nibbles at a feather, pulls it up and locks each barb. She smooths it back down. Her head whips back and she peers again at the paper. "I don't know....do."
Corvi stops dancing and sits. "I do some things when it is the thing to do, and choose not to do that thing when it is not the thing to do."
Eye think...that there are different questions to ask: What are the behaviors that I want to change? When are these behaviors the thing to do, and when are they not the thing to do?

More on originality

2008-05-12T17:38:00.000-07:00

Weird, strange, different, twisted, masked, lonely, raw...you are just right. Perfect. Loved.

I know I love you...each of you. And that I have picked you because I feel the same fears and aches. It is hard to believe that each of you, each perfect you, could love me as I love you. Yet, when I think on it, I know it is true. That you love the things in me that I see as ugly and alienating in me and beautiful and alluring in you.