HOCHMAN TITTIES, TICHACEK VOICE

Sydney is the name my mother wanted to call me, because her pen pals and my godparents, Babs and Henry Foster, whom I never met but who sent me a koala bear fur purse and an Aboriginal doll named Bindi and postcards galore that I tore the stamps off of, lived in Sydney, Australia. The Catholic Church said no, no to Sydney, somebody from the village St. Denis, which is really Dionysis, one of two children Zeus had with mortal women. Mom had it all lined up for me to have a man named Art Hyco who had a German shepherd named Mozart to be the godfather at my baptism. But he was divorced so the Catholic Church said, no, no, to that, too and so I got Babs and Henry. Mamma caved in to the pressure, ran down to the courthouse and at the last minute changed the birth certificate from Sydney Patricia Straub to Patricia Sydney Straub. Patricia was the secretary at my father's work.
My mother called me Sparky and everybody else called me Patti, which rhymes with fatty. I hated it. I wonder if Queen Victoria's granddaughter got that treatment. She brought about the Patricia fad. Patricia is long dead.
My mother's name was Agnes. She hated it. She said the Ag rhymed with hag and bag and sag. She changed it to Ann. In Czech, her mother's name was Milada, but they changed it to Mildred. My mother hated it, too. She said it sounded like mildew. Milada's maiden name was Hochman, and from her Mom said she and my younger sister Jeanie get her big titties.
My mother's maiden name was Tichacek. She hated that name because it sounded like a train chugging on tracks the way it was pronounced Tick-a-check, Tick-a-check, Tick-a-check. Our great uncle Tichacek was from Bohemia and was a Wagnerian opera singer. I got his loud voice and it got me on the cheerleading team in the tenth grade.
My oldest sister's name was Nancy. When she became a Hare Krsna devotee she was given the name Narada. Narada was a great sage. Born of Brahma.
My brother's name is Albert. I'm sure he always hated his name, especially when my mother called him Albert Billy, because she really wanted him to be named William. Albert was named after my father, Albert Edward Louis Straub. His mother's maiden name was Haringhuizen. In Dutch it means house of the herrings.
Straub is Swiss-German. Means bushy-haired thief. It rhymes with slob and snob. I hated it. Solis is a Hispanic surname with roots to the sun goddess Sulis of Great Britain. After my husband died, I thought what name to keep. Sun Goddess Sulis, or bushy haired thief. I stuck with Solis.
I changed my name back to Sydney after working at a small newspaper where there were already too many combinations of Pattis, Pats and Patricias.
My youngest sister Jeanie said she wanted to change her name because every girl in the family did. Bistricky, she picked, after our great-grandmother in old Bohemia. I saw Marie Bistricky's black-and-white picture in stern folk costume, white scarf over her hair, hard mouth clenched tight. I said, I'm sure she would hate it.

BODY II

I am to be showered with confetti at Easter: red, yellow, blue.
Shattered from cascarones; chips of egg shells and colors clinging to a cashmere pullover, red with desire through my skin.
Desire for life, lust, love.
Through the body; as the body; now.

I am to sweat with my lover at night, my body humming with the sound of the fan. And after, the smooth draw of my fingers over his flesh, fingers, face. Breath, blood, blended into eternity, now.

I am to watch young boys scream in joy, dance with bows and arrows, crying for experience of life, limbs, broken destinies, potential powers and heartbeats.

I am to taste pistachio ice cream, glide in a tango step, scrape the ice from my windshield December mornings and cringe.

Ah, the passion of love, the glory of death. All my shadows spun into one stage. One life, pressing into matter shapes of ecstasy, intimacy, hunger and rage. Splendor, fireworks, moon shadows, chipmunk squeaks, newspaper ink. A friend’s shoulder to cry on. A mother’s absence to move me forward, inward, toward myself, toward the other.

My glasses are broken. I don’t need to replace them. Heaven all around. I see it. I see it clear as Her breath on petals at dawn. As ravens gleaning the fields, cawing in rhapsody. As children’s tongues reaching for snowflakes, as jasmine blooming into night. As my sex rushing toward creation; bewilderment; body. How mysterious such life, such joy.

I now know how to stop, look, blossom, expand and indulge – all in one.
Fully expecting it to pass into the shades of memory, as death is already among us.
So why not ravage the moment.
I sense that’s all there is.
Quiet now, or you’ll miss it.

For I am to speak movement into space.
Spread starlight into eyesight
And bring senses into worship.

Story Poetica

I am looking over poetry I wrote while I was a single widowed mother, before Justin.
Story Poetica I and II Blogs.


BIRTH OF A POEM

Isn’t it enough that women bleed together?
Their cycles churning out blueprints of sea monsters and labyrinths reveal their secrets?
How has heaven been so sly?
I should be but a bug moving across the Lord’s notebook
Sing speckled gecko, what are you waiting for?
It’s only the sound of your own voice.


July, 2005

Story

Play

Leslie’s father, Darryl, is silent and stone-chested, a Stetson shadowing his head. He’s hungry for Hamburger Helper and Miller beer after a hard day at the Standard Station he owns. Leslie sulks like a puppy dog, then quick grabs my hand to play upstairs.
Leslie has the best toys. She opens her closet and reveals the Fisher Price castle that opens up clean with a dragon and a queen. She has the airport, the farm. She has new badminton racquets and Stretch Armstrong.
We play between her twin princess beds, each made up with pink and white polka-dot bedspreads. A night table holds miniature plastic horses perfectly posed to trot off into my fantasy.
The toys at my house are all second-hand. Culled from flea markets where you stuff everything you can in a brown paper grocery bag and pay only $1. Out of those grocery bags come baby dolls, frizzy-haired, naked, with pen and crayon markings scarred across their faces, refugees in our house of pain. I don’t play with them. But I do play with the puzzles, pieces missing. Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, limping. I play with the Spirograph, the Battling Tops.
“Don’t put that that top in your mouth,” my mother warns me. “You don’t Mom asks me if I want to leave the second grade at Heatherwood Elementary now and attend Arapahoe Elementary even though the water won’t be turned on at the new house in Shannon Estates for a couple of weeks. I nod in silence that I want to go because I want to get away from the two six-grader girls that sit behind me on the school bus and are always pulling down the hat on my coat and telling me how greasy my hair is.
The six Straubs pull up to a subdivision carved out of a cornfield eight miles east of Boulder on Arapahoe Road. In front of it there’s a big weedy lot Mom says is supposed to be a park someday. We pull up to our new house at 1388 Kilkenny St.
“Here it is kids,” Mom says, and we all pile out of the blue Dodge. It’s small three-bedroom yellow brick ranch with a basement. We go in the door, see the kitchen first, then we skip to the living room.
“Echo! Echo! Echo!” shouts Jeanie and I join in. We clap our hands. “Echo! Echo!” We can’t believe the clear white walls, the emptiness, the quiet.
I roll around on the red and orange shag carpet. Space. Untouched. But Mom is already hauling in shopping bags full of the junk she brought with her from the Gunbarrel apartments, filling up the corners, deadening the sound.
“I hate this stupid entrance,” Mom says. “What kind of a house do you enter and look at the kitchen?”
Little by little, the vast empty space closes down. It’s soon filled with mismatched broken-down furniture, garage sale clothes and dirty appliances. While she’s hauling in all that junk, I’m outside, seven years old, digging for China in the barren dirt of our backyard.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see there is a little girl, standing on her fine green carpet, the instant kind of grass that comes in expensive rolls on a flatbed truck. She’s staring at me. I don’t want to look at her. I’ve got to dig because I’m going to find treasure.
By the time I go in she’s gone, and my mother has already loudly introduced herself to the neighbors next door and she comes back to tell me. “Her name is Leslie and she’s your age,” she says. “Why don’t you go play with her?” I shrug and go out front.
Leslie has thin, dirty-blond hair to her shoulders, lead-penciled freckles on her cheeks and two buckteeth that are like barn doors swinging open. She wears the nice shirt with a little alligator over her heart. I wear a green dress and over my heart is a clumsily hand-embroidered flower of yellow yarn to cover the prior owner’s grease stain.
I soon discover that Leslie has everything that I don’t have.
Her mother, Marilyn, a skinny, young, pretty lady in blue jeans and orange-painted nails who listens to Elvis on eight-track tapes. Not like my mother, who’s old and wrinkly with a fat belly that seems plugged by a stone fetus stuck inside her. My mother’s hair is stringy and she doesn’t wash it much and never goes to the beauty parlor. She wears garage sale clothing and listens to bagpipers or some lady Marlene Dietrich singing in German.
Leslie’s mother stirs a glass pitcher full of Kool-Aid, raspberry, cherry, lime. She keeps a cupboard full of Kix for kids and a clean house with a living room nobody lives in, sofas nobody sits in. There’s a wall lined with Windexed, checkered mirrors, and downstairs a family room with Little House on the Prairie on TV.
At my house my mother stirs up powdered milk to put on our puffed rice. The furniture is covered with tattered fabric remnants from So Fro Fabrics. My mother doesn’t clean the house, so when it gets real dirty she screams at Nancy and Albert to clean it up. My father, usually with a migraine headache, sleeps in a darkened bedroom or talks to people in Dutch on a Ham radio. WB0CJH.
know what dirty hippy had that last.”
Leslie has a suitcase full of Barbie doll clothes. It bursts open when the latches snap back. My heart leaps. There are some outfits for Ken, five hundred for Barbie. It is a treasure chest and I am a pirate.
My small, second-grade hands cascade over the jewels of satin and plastic-sequined Barbie couture. My right hand waves over a plaid vest with golden buttons, so small, so perfect. It disappears in my fist. Hold tight. Out of Leslie’s sight. I stare at the floor.
“I have to go now. Good-bye.”
And I come home to my G.I. Joe, plucked from a garage sale. Some child ripped off his right leg at the knee and he’s missing one of his Kung Fu grips. But he has his shaggy beard, his scarred cheek. In my bedroom he is home from the war, at home with a harem of frizzy-haired Barbies with mismatched heads. I wonder why all the dolls’ hair frizzed up. A plastic sheen turned sponge scrubber.
I put the vest over G.I. Joe’s naked body. He is dressed. He is rich. To act out a thousand stories in the ruins of my deprivation.
“Patti, come practice your piano.” My mother waits for me at the old player piano for my lesson. She loves to play. I play because my mother makes me. We get free lessons from the music students at the university. I watch as my mother’s dentures click and she breathes heavy coffee breath and her crooked long fingers tickle the chipped ivory keys.
We bought the piano from some hippies in Boulder. I remember their house, wooden with peeling paint, somewhere downtown. Shirtless blond children rolling around on a ragged couch. The piano came home. Its heavy black wood blocked a window and sunlight struggled behind its rectangular silhouette. We opened up the piano. Among its old wooden guts and wires we found dozens of pennies, cigarette butts, a paperback of the Baghavad Gita, a copper bust bank of General Macarthur.
The keys give a dull thud when pressed. Mom called in a tuner, he was blind. He told her, “Throw it out.” But we didn’t. We played on it. I learned from Teaching Little Fingers To Play. “Here we go, up a row, to a birthday party. Dolly dear, sandman’s near you will soon be sleeping.” I played and I played because I was supposed to.
The next day Leslie rings the doorbell and asks if I can play.
“Come on in, Leslie,” my mother says. “She’s playing the piano.” My fingers go into my mouth as I dread Leslie seeing our house. I turn and see her, uncomfortable. Surely she sees the piles of clothing on the floor, the library discards, the saved elastic waistbands cut from men’s old underwear, the endless piles of paper scrawled with my mother’s poetry. She sits down next to me, and I, round-shouldered, begin to play. I continued to play and I straighten up. Then I begin improvising, banging on the keys, my fingers flying up and down the keyboard, my voice free. “Blah, blah blah. La Dee Da!.”
“That sounds stupid,” Leslie says.
I am frozen into silence and my stomach flutters to my throat. She is right. This hideous piano, my hideous home. Her suitcase full of store-bought Barbie doll clothes. Her fresh Kool-aid breath and green grass stains on her new white Nikes.
“Let’s go to my house to play,” she says. And we do.
The next day Leslie rings the doorbell again. I am happily reading my second grade books on Greek myths. She has a girlfriend, Chris, white-blond hair and one year older.
“Do you want to come and play?” they carry a baseball and bat.
I’d rather read my myths.
“Don’t be such a stick in the mud. Go out and play,” my mother tells me. So I do, with my fingers in my mouth and my head down. Out to the street. They assign teams, them against me and Leslie’s five-year-old sister, Kristin.
They are first to bat. I pitch. They always hit the ball skipping past me, past the baby sister, and I am running, running up the street after it. They score again and again and again and again. I am silent, fingers in my mouth, holding the storm inside my heart, wanting to rain tears. Again and again I chase the ball. Finally I can take no more. As the ball tears past me across the asphalt I turn away holding my torture inside and walk straight home.
“Did you have fun?” my mother asks, not looking up from her book. I hide in the bathroom and only there do I cry silently, hiccupping in shame.
Still Leslie and Chris ring the doorbell another day. And still my mother tells me to go out.
“Let’s play house,” they say.
“OK,” I say. “You can be the mother, I can be the father, and you can be the baby.”
“Did you hear that, Leslie?” Chris rolls her eyes. “She said you can be the baby.
Again doubt and fear strangle my heart.
“No, no, I didn’t mean …”
“She called you a baby.” They are right. I am wrong.
Still they ring the doorbell. We play four square in the street with Leslie’s big round ball. They do choppers and the ball spins past me. I run to chase it and an old woman talking a walk picks it up and hands it to me.
“Here you go, pretty girl,” she says.
I go back to the game. I start the ball. Leslie catches it and holds on to it. She points right at me and sneers.
“You’re ugly. She’s pretty,” and points to Chris. She has to be right. Leslie’s the one with tulips, red, yellow, pink, blooming in her front yard. All we have are Chinese elms coming up wild. That night I sneak to Leslie’s yard. I snap a red velvety tulip and leave a hollow half stem. I put it on the piano. My mother doesn’t notice.
It is on the school bus that Chris decides to start calling me “Patty fatty, Patty fatty.” Every day. “Patty fatty. Patty fatty.” And the children laugh and my cheeks burn. I cry. I cry all the way home. My mother is playing the piano. She stops after a while and asks what’s wrong. I blubber it out to her. She says nothing, just clicks her false teeth and narrows her eyes.
The next day after school I get off the bus. My mother is waiting for me. Instead of greeting me, she turns to Chris, and pulls her aside.
“Chris piss, Chris piss,” my mother hisses at her. “Chris piss, how does it feel little girl?” Chris bursts into tears and starts walking quickly away. My mother follows. “Chris piss, Chris piss, don’t you ever call my daughter names again you dirty little dog.” I am so embarrassed and race past them all, race home to my room to cry. The next day somebody from the Social Services comes by to talk to my mother. Leslie and Chris don’t come around for a long time.
My mother buys a camper at a garage sale and my dad and brother Albert load it onto the back of our yellow Chevy truck. It’s a tiny fishing hut. Dead flies line the windows that smell like metal. The cushions are itchy brown and there are orange, scratchy curtains. I am sweeping it out, getting ready for a camping trip, when Leslie and Chris appear.
“Hey, you want to play camping?” Leslie asks. I shrug.
Chris and Leslie decide they want to play house and cook on the stove. They bring in green grass, ripping it from her lush lawn, stuffing it under the metal burners. They play, I watch in silence, broom in hand. They bring more and more grass in, covering the whole stove, spilling it on the floor.
“LESLIE! It’s time to eat!” I hear Leslie’s mother call from a window. Albert steps up to the door and sees the mess. Albert, tall, who is under the hood of a VW with the four Campbell boys down Kilkenny Street, or taking apart radios and putting them back together again. Albert, who Mom cuts his bushy brown hair too short and makes him wear dorky K-mart shoes and is teased at school. Kids throw his homework papers all over the street and he just walks on, red-cheeked. Albert, who cries quietly at the edge of his bed but comes out of his room red-faced and tight-jawed ready to punch something, anything. Albert who chops up wood that is starting to rot in the backyard, sets fire to the Kleenex in Mom’s skull ashtray that says ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY, then when Mom is gone, chops up old dirty chairs and discarded books and burns them in the fireplace.
Albert looks at me. He looks at them playing. They start for the door.
“Hey, you better clean this up,” he says to them. Leslie’s mouth hangs open and stares at him.
“I have to go now. I have to go in and eat dinner,” she whimpers.
“You’re not leaving until every blade of grass is gone from here,” he says. Leslie and Chris look at each other.
“LESLIE! GET INSIDE. IT’S TIME TO EAT!” It’s her father calling now.
Leslie’s eyes round with fear. She and Chris franticly start plucking the grass out of the stove and into a box. They try and run.
“Clean it all up,” Albert snaps. They work faster.
“LESLIE! GET INSIDE THIS MINUTE! OR YOU KNOW WHAT’S COMING!” her father yells.
“I have to go!” Leslie is near tears.
“Clean it all up, you little shits.” My brother’s face is scarlet red and he’s blocking the door.
Finally it is all out. Chris jumps out of the camper and Leslie tears to the back of her house. I peer out the camper. I see her father, large, huffing with a heavy leather belt in his red hand, strolling fast toward the back of her house.
“LESLIE, WHAT DID I TELL YOU?” he roars.
I hear the whips. I hear Leslie wailing. I hear the whips. Again and again, heavy snapping on bare skin.
I go into my house. Again, I think, there is something that Leslie has that I don’t. And I am glad.
I go to the player piano. My mother is playing Mack the Knife. I sit next to her and listen, ignoring the bad notes. And I am glad.

Dream of Mermaid and a the Crushing Train

I had a dream a few nights ago in which I had a little gypsy-like wagon and it was driven by this Viking-type woman with glowing orange, fluorescent hair. Another car was let in a gate, but she wasn't. So she was then found on a ship, as if waiting it out, and at the bow she was struggling with ropes with great determination to bring this orange-fluorescent mermaid to the boat. Then she got word she could go forward with her cart, and she chugged along a train track. Her little dog slipped out the left side, and then a huge train/machine came and just rolled right over her wagon. It was smashed to pieces, and she rolled under the train.

So I figured that was life coming at me, smashing me to pieces. Like the Speer basement flooding. That is being handled by Tom, thank GOD. Because I bought some Rum and Coke and since I'm not Jesus there is only so much I can take! So the family does want to live there, but wrote up a special amendment to the property and they are going to get started maintaining it, etc. And Tom cleaned it up and the carpets are now cleaned and it looks %100 percent better and the former tenant I guess had broken the window so she fixed it! Yay!

An e-course participant thought my dream was about my spirit, that I can get crushed physically, but my work, my dreams and stories and soul, as the dog escaping ahead out the side, is intact and what really matters. And true, I read in one of my Twitter feeds that the true measure of success is how much joy you feel. And I felt so much joy today, at my son's fifth grade graduation ceremony. I enjoyed being with community, his friend's parents, as we had breakfast together and I hung around to talk and help clean up. Then it was home to pick up a few garden flowers as teacher gifts, and what joy to be among plants and flowering beautifully on a gorgeous spring day. Just a few weeks ago the crab apple tree in the back yard was radiantly in full bloom, as were the lilacs, filling the house with gorgeous aroma. How sweet the fullness of spring. And it was sweet to see the last of my son's teacher, who I have had a secret crush on this whole year. I had my daughter give him a little rose plant. He's Italian and I thought that would be nice. Perhaps he will even get a message in it! But I am always to shy to ever act.
And then it was to picnic in my daughter's class. Then back home to do a little work, and walk my dog in the mountains again. And to look up and see the blue sky and bright white cloud and see the radiance of joy and life. That is truly wonderful.

It's funny, because I thought about emailing my lawyer a hello, that I missed talking to him, not really about Justin, but in general. I figured he thought I was a kook with my history and case, so I refrained from saying hello or sending him my new head shot. But I should have because.....

I got the mail before I head back to school with more plants and gifts for the specials teachers and for my daughter to say goodbye to her favorite teacher. Notices of the publishing of sale in the paper for foreclosure on the property. Justin lied. He lied about curing the default. I told my lawyer we needed proof! And now what to do. It makes me sick but I don't think about it. The Queen of Bohemia does not let things upset her. She does not resort to writing nasty text messages or anything that she is thinking about because she knows that stuff is just rot. It rots you in the core. So she releases it to her lawyer. And she still rejoices in the day, and the rain now, as long as it doesn't pour into the basement unit at Speer. Life can just steam roll over her again and again, but her spirit is unscathed.

Underwater

There is a strange calm as I sit here wondering what to do. It rained for four days straight and so it leaked into the basement apartment at Speer. The people are freaking out and don’t want to move in there. I told them to talk to Tom the fix it, management guy, who had told me that certain things need to be done and in a few hours it could be fixed that the water won’t leak there. But I don’t think they understand. I’m not sure if their check has cleared yet from the bank I deposited on Saturday. So I think how many god damn problems there are on the property and that this will drive me insane. That’s what Tom is for. To deal with stuff. He said it would be all right. But you reach a point when you just are not sure.
You wonder when you should just walk away. I mean the whole damn America is going down the drain, California is in the poor house. We shall see.
I will take Paloma to tutoring and I will sign Hondo up for football camp and I will take him to the Mac store for his lesson before I pick Paloma up again and then pick him up and take them home and make dinner.
I will meditate and I will just be happy no matter what. I made an appointment with a bankruptcy lawyer. I don’t quite know what to do, but I have heard that holding to the tension is a spiritual practice. Indeed it is.
The mortgages are underwater and now the apartment is too!

PATTI WITH AN I

Mom wrote the name Sydney Patricia Straub on my birth certificate and kept it that way for two weeks, but at the last minute ran down to the Dover, New Jersey courthouse to change it to Patricia Sydney. She wanted me to be named Sydney, but the Catholic Church didn’t approve. Besides, Dad wanted the name Patricia after some secretary at his work. But Mom really wanted Sydney. So she wrote it down for two weeks before she chickened out.
The Catholic church wouldn’t allow to be my godfather this divorced man named Art Hyco, who had a German shepherd named Mozart, so at the last minute some proxy stood in for my naming, and my godparents became some pen pals in Sydney, Australia that Mom had never met. My godparents, Babs and Harry Foster send me all these funky gifts for Christmas from down under, like a purse made out of Koala bear fur, or a commemorative plate of the Sydney Opera House, or a Waltzing Matilda shirt with a old bearded guy wearing a silly hat with corks hanging on it on one side and an Australian map on the other, or an aboriginal doll named Bindi. Bindi is pitch black, as dark as dark chocolate, with brown blinking eyes that stare like a psycho killer, and she came with a little aboriginal outfit, but I lost it. She had a paper boomerang with BINDI on it rubber banded around her hand, but I lost that too. Now we use it as a voodoo doll for our Halloween costumes.
“Australia,” my Dad says, eating a Sambal sandwich, looking at the Australian stamp on the back of a postcard the Fosters sent.
“Did I tell you I almost moved to Australia?” I shake my head no. “After the camp was liberated, I wandered from camp to camp trying to find my mother. I couldn’t find her and I didn’t know where else to go, so I came back to my camp. The Red Cross was advising everybody to go to Australia, so I took the first hand of the man I saw and said, ‘I’m going with you.”
My parents ended up calling me Patti. And it’s spelled Patti with an I, not a Y, so I have to correct everybody who writes it and it’s hard to find for me a license plate or coffee a mug in the souvenir stores because they only have PATTY, so I have to go with PAT or PATRICIA.
Some Arab men came to my first-grade class to talk about their culture. They were writing the class’s names in Arabic and when I said my name Patti, they said, “Potty? Potty?” with quizzical looks on their faces. And other kids call me rice Patty, or hamburger Patti, or Patti-O, or Peppermint Patty or Patty cake. Or I get the dreaded Patty fatty. Or they rhyme my last name Straub with Snob or Slob or they say I’m Patti Stroft because of the Northern bathroom tissue commercial on TV. “It’s not strong and it’s not soft, it’s STROFT.”
Nancy’s middle name is Nancy Ann. Jeanie got the full Catholic naming of Jean Elizabeth Rebecca, Albert’s middle name is William, but Mom shortens it to Albert Billy, which he hates. “Albert Billy, Albert Billy, come and eat. Albert Billy Albert Billy, cut that bushy hair!”
Mom says that her mother’s name in Czechoslovakian is Milada, but it got changed to Mildred. “It sounds terrible, like mildew or mold,” she says. My mother changed her name from Agnes to Ann, because she hates how the Ag in Agnes rhymes with gag, sag, nag, hag, bag and rag.

Double Saturn

I have one month left of a double Saturn in my Vedic astrology chat. Indeed this has been the last six months of hell. Only by remaining in the transcendent when things get me tough and an occasional bottle of wine and other fun things do I survive! It's by sheer strength and determination, the products of yoga.
I woke up in the middle of the nigh again, worrying about Speer, but once morning comes and I have my daily walk in nature, my heart guides me once again to surrender and choose, knowing that whatever I choose, it's the right choice, because it's my choice. I can deal with anything that comes of it because I am strong and courageous. Yoga and meditation keep me that way. And after being at the bottom several times, you find out that there's a comfort there, a grounding in your being, so you're not afraid any more. In fact people should stop hoarding money for their retirement and just become a wandering sadhu. It is much more liberating that way! And it's very powerful to live in that kind of faith. And that's what I have found, my faith. I definitely believe in a serpentine-representing power of the cosmos, and that I am a part of that power and cosmos. I walk and see the awe of this world and reality around me. My body, my children, the sound of birds, and yet also connect to this deep, unspoken song that holds me in its arms.
My lawyer told me that there would be no contempt of court hearing because Justin has supposedly cured some of the default, although it's probably a lie because that is how he functions. He stalls and stalls and leads you on with lies until it comes back to him again and he has to deal with it again with lies and broken promises. And he wonders why it lingers! My lawyer used the power of words to put his hooks in him and make him look in the mirror. I think justice was served that way to Justin, even if he didn't get contempt of court. Actually it was postponed, because Justin has piled on more debt for himself. Thank God I am out of that mindset. And I don't even want to think about it anymore, because that's an awful vibration, not something the Queen of Bohemia gives any of her power and attention to. I'd rather think about starting women's collectives, in which single and widowed mothers with children can live together and raise their children together and get lots of support. I was heart-broken, truly sickened today by the sad story in the paper about this woman in Albuquerque who had suffocated her 3-year-old son, resuscitated him after a change of heart, only to change her mind again and finish the job. She buried him in the sand at the playground, where he was found three days later. She was walking to turn herself in, but they stopped her before she got there. She said she didn't want him to suffer from not being loved and cared for, like she had not been loved or cared for growing up. The symbolism of this woman murdering her child on a playground screams loudly about how our society does not care for its women and children, so they must resort to infanticide. It's symbolic of our mindset in general, as the world sinks in economic depression from corruption, greed and violence. The feminine and life are not valued in our culture, so it is murdered and buried on the site of what is to be inspirational and a bed of creation and life and joy.
My heart goes out to that woman and her son. I know how incredibly difficult it is to raise a child alone. And the strain of economic uncertainty can take its toll on everybody. And the loneliness and isolation is about as abnormal as you can get, a product of our modern society. Alienated from each other, we seek community and connection to help us with life's biggest challenges, such as raising children. We should be pro life in the sense that we care for the living children and their mothers in this country and the world, supporting financially by expanding social security to women and their children. And those who scoff at not supporting people on the dole, where have you scuttled your assets off shore, failed to pay taxes or cooked the books. Truly we need to move toward a compassionate society, no matter what the costs, because the results of not making the world safe for women and children are hideous.

And then today I had this scuttle with my sister who is a librarian and a heroin addict, or she's on methadone or something. And her boyfriend is in jail for drugs, but that is another story! I just breathe! And I don't respond to her upset letters. The Queen of Bohemia does not engage in such low energies but she sends her love and reticence instead.

The Return of Sophia

I have this rental property in Denver that I ended up with in my divorce. So I’ve been managing it lately to get it under control, which has been a huge, time-eating pain and enormously draining emotionally and financially. I can't stand it any more so I’m am now turning it over to a property management company, but I still have to rent out the basement unit.

Now the basement unit is not cute like the other places in this old house in Highlands Square, and it’s actually quite down right dumpy. But it has managed to be rented to somebody, recently a string of more Goth young women.

I want a bit high of rent, but that’s just to cover expenses. I have shown it a lot, with a few interests, yet the final verdict was they found something better.

Late one night I get a call from a heavily accented woman. I run down there from Boulder, (thank GOD I have a Prius!) and it’s a Hispanic woman and her mother.

“You OK to rent to Hispanics? Because some people don’t like to rent to Spanish-people, you know?”

I responded in Spanish that my late husband was Hispanic and my children are Hispanic and that I am not a racist. I showed them around, the laundry room (new coin op washer and dryer on a Lowe’s Credit card!) Then she said there would be four people and three cars. Four people and three cars in that 2BR, 2BA? I thought, oh boy, the other tenants may not like that. She said they have to find a place in a hurry because the place where they lived for four years, the owner wants to move back in to refinance. I sure understand that notion. I had considered it but thought, “No way! My kids’ education and safety and happiness are number one. I don’t care what it costs.”

Everybody eventually showed up. The young brother is 11, and he goes, coincidentally, to the same school as my best friend’s Son, Maria Sandoval. It’s this great bilingual school. I was jealous that my friend’s kid could speak such great Spanish and that it was so well integrated socio-economically!
The boy is trying to get into the same international school as my friend’s son. The older son is 23, works at the local restaurant, and is going to Metro next year on a cross-country scholarship.

I saw it all there. The issue and reality of poor Hispanics, living in that fringe world of Spanish-speaking parents and their American-born kids who are translating for them, getting good jobs and an education. Following the American Dream, nonetheless. These kids work like hell, and I’m so impressed. He’s not like the suburban boys whose Mama’s take them shopping at Macy’s. He went to the local North High School. And considering I was just performing near there during Cinco de Mayo, I know what these kids are up against to survive. The stress, violence, family and social issues. I think about my late husband, Frank Q. Solis, how his first job was shoe shining in San Antonio and his grandfather was a semi-literate butcher. I think how the lines blur generationally, and that eventually it won’t matter who you are or where you come from, you are just a human being and deserve basic human rights to live.

I remember Justin had said a Hispanic family had come by once, but when you gave them the application, they never came back. Probably not having the credentials needed. Maybe they are illegal.

But instead of wondering if they were or illegal, what I looked and I saw standing in front of me an 11-year-old boy who needed a place to live and safety and security so that he could do well in school. I saw his hard-working older brother, and I saw his charming mother who I enjoyed talking Spanish to and about Mexico and how she didn’t get an education in Mexico as a child because she had to work and I know how desperate and poor things can be down there because I have been there many times.

And who would not want a better life for their child? I would never blame anybody so courageous and loving for their children that they risk death to cross the border. Unless you’ve traveled abroad and seen extreme poverty for yourself, you will never understand what I am talking about. And I think about those children, born into poverty. I remember when I worked for a newspaper in Mexico City there were children who lived in the sewers, and the whole world is filled with suffering children, as so beautifully told in the movie Slumdog Millionaire recently.

The father turns out he is a builder. So perfect! I will exchange some rent for fixing up this badly neglected property, such as the exterior paint and the chimney that may fall down at any moment and crush someone. My best friend gave them rave reviews, and so did the man’s employer.

I woke up in the middle of the night thinking, “Oh, no! Sydney, here you go again! Trusting too much! Look where that got you. What if this is all an act? They will skip on the rent! How will you evict them? You didn’t get all those people’s information! It will destroy you!”

But somehow I don’t think so. Somehow I think it will work out actually really well. They can do the weeding also. And I will practice my Spanish and continue fixing up the place. And I hope that they prosper, and that their children do really well in school and contribute as upstanding citizens to the good old U.S.A. Because there is a revolution going on and a renaissance at the same time. Things are changing, and the change is taking place on a different realm. It’s the realm of the heart. It’s the return of Sophia.

I hope that every child in the world gets adequate shelter, clothing, food and an education. Even if these people were illegal, I would still rent to them, because I follow a law that is higher than those of men. My law is of love and justice and humanity. And where there is a child involved, I will always do what is best for the child first. And I think that’s where the world is headed, that we do things for humanity first, especially children, and not for profit. When we move from that center everything is in balance and the dharma just leads everything to its place.

¡Viva la revolución!

Amor y paz
Sydney Solis

Radix Ipsius Revisited

I drove down to Speer AGAIN, to show the basement unit. It's pretty dumpy; a window is broken and covered up with duct tape, the carpet is pretty worn. It's not THAT bad, and again, Highlands Square is a popular neighborhood. People have looked at it and they are interested, just when I made drastic plots in my mind that I would default on my mortgages and credit cards and move to Mexico or India and home school my children. But I was able to identify those fearful thoughts, and put my Queen of Bohemia into action and not manifest anything so negative. I envisioned with my poppyseed wand that the basement will be rented, I will fix it up over time, because it really is a darn cute property and my "golden nugget," according to one financial adviser. It's just that this basement one is hard to fill and it's summer so there is a lot of competition. I could lower the price, but then all this moving tenants around and fixing up and raising rents on that upper end would be for not! One guy applied, but I can't be desperate because he is pretty sketchy, was reluctant to give me his bank account info, which turns out not to exist. So I think eating a month's rent is cheaper than doing an eviction!

I brought my daughter to Speer and later we had fun exploring the Hispanic area of N. Federal Blvd. Checking out the Botanica Yemaya, which I've driven past a zillion times but never stopped in. We used our Spanish interpreting the soaps, herbs and magical candles used for protection, getting rid of envy, bringing money, even changing bad students into good ones! We checked out all the statues of the saints and various incense. My daughter said it was just like Mexico, and indeed, it's a nice little change. We loaded up on Mexican candy and I bought a Jesus candle and some soap of the saints. The cashier told me, "Buena suerte," as we left, and yes, because of the power of my thoughts I will have good luck. Then we stopped at the Piñateria and bought a little friend who is about to have a birthday a handmade mermaid piñata. Amazing they still do this stuff, and it's not all just imported from China! I wondered how the guy manages his rent. So this time with my daughter is the most important thing, even though the worries about the rental properties and Justin still in contempt of court mess, I keep my mind at peace with the joy of what really matters. My children. Even yesterday, we walked down to the park again. The simplicity that arises in the present moment that fills you up with joy, knowing that this is why we exist. To kick a ball and run, to hear the laughter of your children, and to chase after your dog. I know that when you lose everything you do find your Self. That Radix Ipsius, the root of yourself. You can hear it clearly in the darkest of your hours. You are grounded in this Being that shows itself very clearly and unmistakably. I have found that also I have returned to the Prima Materia. That first ground, before the wounding. I reflect on the absence of Frank and the children's father, that terrible loss. How to get back to that joyous space that we were in before the death, before all the upheaval and terror. When my children were just little itty bitty kids and we had raspberry picnics in our backyard, just eating the raspberries off the canes and threading together pea seed pods to make necklaces and there wasn't a care in the world.
So it's just the three of us again, me and my children. And that's all I need for now. Even though tis' enormously lonely and I have to invite my father over to eat with us once a week or I would go nuts. And I may ask my sister to live with me too just out of sheer necessity because people weren't meant to raise children alone. Only in this odd American isolated world does that happen. And maybe we are all going into the fourth dimension like my father says, and not to worry, and maybe he's not insane because interestingly enough, listening to Fritjof Capra's the Tao of Physics again, he says the same thing!
And even though the landlady wants to raise the rent on where I am now in Boulder, I do not fear. I won't think about moving home to my father's house where it is squalid and unlivable and is the negative thinking of my mother and my childhood. All negative thinking is removed, because that's the Queen. Thoughts of slashing the tires on my former mini van out of anger and vengeance or wishing Justin doom all vanish with the wave of my poppy seed wand. I don't create that hell. because truly hell is in your own experience of life through the lens of a cloudy mind, and you alone create that experience with your emotions, thoughts and focus.
I'd rather be rooted and create from there. I will stay in this lovely house way up near the foothills in Boulder because I know and I believe that everything will work out, despite my heavy load. And there is only one more month of double Saturn. I will survive. And I have been keeping the Boulder house clean and tidy. It's a continual effort. Like a new life. And that is very, very good.

Backwards We Spell Japan

Nancy, Albert, Patti and Jeanie. Backwards the first letters of our names spell JAPAN. We always knew that. We children always knew that our father is Dutch and that he is a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp. It was during World War II. He was born on the island of Java. Before it was called Indonesia. Before, when it was a Dutch colony run by the Dutch East India Company. One captain Straub was our seafaring ancestor who married a princess from the island of Madura.
The Dutch traded coffee and sugar, quinine and indigo to bring back to the motherland, and tea that grew on plantations cleared from the jungle. My father lived on tea and sugar plantations, with my Oma, his two sisters, and my grandfather Straub, a mechanical engineer who kept the plantation machinery going. He starved to death in a POW camp outside of Tokyo. I know him only as a charcoal drawing on white paper hanging above my father’s bed.
“Those dirty Japs,” Mom always says. “Thank God for the atomic bomb.”
We know that our father is a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp because Mom tells everybody. The people with blank faces at St. Ambrose Church that mom forces me to attend, to my neighbor Leslie’s mother, to Lou the skinny milkman who nods and nods and nods.
“They don’t know about the dirty Japs, Patti,” she says to me. I tell Mom about the Holocaust we are studying in school. Gritty black-and-white films of shriveled corpses bulldozed into pits, Jews’ hair made into rugs, their skin into soap. “Tell your teacher your father was a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp,” Mom says. I do. My teacher stares at me bewildered.
“Is your father Japanese?” No, no. I shake my head. “Is he Jewish?” No, no. I can’t speak. I feel it stuck in my throat. My family is in the wrong concentration camp.
We know that our father is a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp. We go to the K-Mart, Nancy, Albert, Patti and Jeanie. With Mom, who chases down blue-light specials for cheap blue-and-red plaid shirts.
“Come on, kids, hurry!” she says running.
It’s Hiroshima Nagasaki Day. August 6, 1976 in Boulder, Colorado. We stop at the snack stand for white hoagie sandwiches with ham and lettuce and mayonnaise. Mom orders water, but Nancy pleads for Icees, and Mom thinks, and then says OK. We hold the waxy Icee drink cups with polar bear triangles on the side that Albert cuts out and mails in for free cheapo gifts. The Icee cups full of red slush that make it easy for Nancy and me to shoplift red fingernail polish in.
“$4.95,” the girl behind the counter says. She is bored, with blond-feathered hair. She glosses her lips with a sour grape Bonnie Bell lip smacker. She stares at Mom’s nose, broken in 1943 when she was kicked by a horse. Plastic surgery wasn’t too good back then and now her nose looks like someone mashed a wad of silly putty on the tip.
“Do you know what today is?” Mom asks. The girl shrugs. “It’s Hiroshima Nagasaki Day. When we bombed the Japs.” I press my face to the glass, watch my nose leave a crescent of steam.
You know, my husband is a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp,” Mom says, fishing through her big, black secondhand handbag. “If we didn’t drop the bomb, none of these children would be standing in front of you.” We suck our Icees, bite the straws, shoulders hunched, backs turned. We disappear into our own fantasy. We are not here with Mom. Not with this moment.
“Shit, dog shit. Bobbie rocco moco poco pup,” Mom says. Mom can’t find the money. She can find the car keys at the bottom of the bag, along with the broken lipstick containers, cracker crumbs and dried lemon slices swiped from restaurants. She can find the coupons, the dry felt-tip pens, the spare Kotex that will catch her diarrhea that suddenly comes on out of nowhere, because she ate too many tomatoes or drank too much black coffee. The diarrhea that drops in small brown bloodstains behind her after she quickly pays the girl, then shuffles to the bathroom at the back of the store.
Nancy, Albert, Patti and Jeanie. We wolf down our hoagies sitting in the yellow and orange snack booths waiting for Mom. Nancy is the oldest, older than me by six years. Then came Albert, ten months later. Irish twins, my father says. Then came me, born late, the day after Christmas, 1966. And then Jeanie, two Februarys later. Mom says we were accidents. Four 10-pound accidents. She could have found somebody rich, married Liberace, or Onassis, or somebody else, she says. But she asked our father to marry her, and she got us.
We know that our father is a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp. We are packed in our house together, like the thousands packed into the concentration camp, in the monastery at Ambarawa 7 where Dad lived for three years as a little boy. We are packed into house that has no dining room and no family room. Jeanie and Albert are together in one bedroom, Nancy and me in another. Then Mom and Dad in the big bedroom. But Mom is everywhere. She is in the oversized painting of fishing boats washed on the shore, mysteriously without fishermen, hanging crooked in the living room. She is the collection of pen-and-ink caricature drawings on the wall, her oversized head looking like a young Johnny Cash with long hair, her hand posed with a writing quill. She is the innumerable scattering of out-of-date books, astronomy, chemistry, world encyclopedias and communist China film strips grabbed from the free box at the Boulder Valley School’s discard sale. She is the neighbor’s trashcans that she digs through, searching, pulling, hauling things back to the house, old wood, broken mirrors, or locks with no keys. She is the popcorn-yellow paint in the kitchen laced heavy with gray cobwebs and pork sausage grease splatters, the pork sausage grease saved in a coffee cup that smells up the kitchen, smells up the house, fouls my heart. She is the cut up clothing laying all over the floor, on every floor, in every corner, heaped like refugee rag dolls, along with the piles of records, ripped up hand bags, old cans of blue paint. The blue paint she painted the outside of the house without finishing the job, the blue paint that streaks the back of the bathroom door, that is all over the porcelain toilets, all over the scuff marks on the tips of her shoes.
We know our father was a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp.
“Scrape your plate,” Mom always says. “I should put you in a concentration camp and let you starve.” That’s what Mom says at the dinner table while we stare at the trash piled high on the fake wood table -- the elastic cut off from Dad and Albert’s old underwear, the coupons glued together with spilled milk and mold, the thimbles, newspaper clippings, nuts and bolts, the unwashed dishes, dirty knick knacks from garage sales, the dusty plastic flowers falling out of a dented aluminum tea kettle.
We eat Mom’s cooking, eat chipped beef that was boiled in a plastic bag, or chew green peppers stuffed with white rice off of chipped plates and drink from faded, plastic glasses that once had pink and green beach scenes on them. Mom found them last week at a garage sale for a quarter.
We hold Mom’s cooking in our mouths, peppers stuffed with rice with no flavor. We wipe our faces with paper towels when she’s not looking and unload the mouthfuls in them. We slink under the table. We try to escape. I pick through the broken cookies at the bottom of the wooden cookie jar, brushing off the tiny bugs and old crumbs clinging to them.
We know our father was a child survivor of a concentration camp. How he starved. A 10-year old boy, taken from his mother and sisters and put in a camp for old men and adolescent boys. The Jongenscamp. Surviving on clothing starch, snails, grass or scraping the ultra-thin layer inside a banana peel, or filling his belly up with the compressed straw that was for the guards’ pigs, or drinking from toilets in the dark of the night, or crouching by the bamboo fence and waiting for something to eat, for something to crawl under the fence and into the camp – anything -- rats or snakes that he grabbed by the tail and whipped to break their backs and eat them raw.
“Look at this!” Mom cries. “Look at this last drop of milk you have wasted! Sit back down here and drink it. People are starving to death!” Her mouth is a rectangular slot of false teeth lined with shiny wire, clenched, carving lines deep as dry old cheese into the corners of her mouth. All I see are her waxy pink-gummed false teeth that slide out of her mouth and sit in a glass of water that is never changed. The glass of water on top of the rusting medicine cabinet in the bathroom that Mom, using her zigzag scissors, pasted over with sticky contact paper of sailing ships. I see the false teeth, yellow hunks of food stuck between the teeth, floating and trying to escape. They sit in front of the mirror dimmed by years of white toothpaste splatter where I stare at myself brushing my teeth with my blue gun toothbrush. I am thin, thin, skeleton thin, knobby elbows, tall for my age. My Dutch white face, heart-shaped with wide Czech cheeks and a pointy chinned, is shocked by my dark brown hair that I hate, stick straight like Dad’s. With my green-brown eyes I stare. I don’t think. I don’t feel.
We know that our father is a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp. I see Dad sitting on the rattan couch that was once new from American Furniture warehouse, now covered with layers of unsewn, unmatched tattered fabric that was on sale at So-Fro Fabrics for 35 cents a yard.
Dad sits alone on the couch listening to Madame Butterfly. The part where she finds out that Pinkerton has a new wife. A cone of sandalwood incense burns He has taken pills for his migraine headaches. The headaches he gets every day to some degree. Sometimes bad. In the middle of the night, waking up sweating. From remembering something. Or thinking of it. He takes codeine, amatriptaline, bottlesfuls. Their yellow-brown plastic containers sit next to his bed on the bed stand next to the picture of Jesus that glows in the dark. The empty containers fall, roll under the bed. Some tall and thin, other fat and big. With long pills, yellow pills, round white pills. When the headaches are really bad he goes to the hospital and they stick a needle full of Demerol in his neck and he sleeps for days.
Tonight the headache is bad. Dad took many pills. He is slow. I walk up behind him and without a word gently place my hands on his head. I ask God why. Why? Why do people suffer? Why did my father have to go through hell as a child? Why did he survive?
My hands run like seeping water through his hair, gray, greasy, limp. My hands pull his hair, just like the nurse he had in Java. She knew just where to twist and pull a section of hair to make a headache go away. I pull his hair. Pull out the tigers and snakes roaming the jungles of Indonesia, when it was the Dutch East Indies. Pull out the pain, pull out the war, pull out the headache that will leave Dad in bed with a wet washcloth over his eyes. Unable to move, drenched in tears and sweat, unable to hear in the darkness of his room or go to work at his job as a mechanical engineer beneath fluorescent lights in a yellow brick building in Boulder.
My fingers push on his muscles, the bulging tight muscles in his neck that connect to his head, that surge into his eyes, forcing them closed, unable to watch Star Trek or Buck Rogers or the Project Blue Book episodes that we have seen so many times we know the dialogue by heart.
“Shit, dog shit. Bobbie rocco moco poco pup,” Mom says, searching for something, alone in the kitchen as she opens and shuts the kitchen cabinets, opens and shuts them. “Rocco moco poco pup. Shit, dog house.” My hands pull Dad’s hair harder.
“Shake your hands,” Dad says in his thick Dutch accent. “Shake the pain out of your hands. Get rid of it.”
I shake and I shake.
“Cat, rat, trap, dog dump,” Mom says as she opens and shuts the kitchen cabinets, opens and shuts them.
At midnight, Dad vomits in the bathroom. Vomits in the toilet that is always clogged with Mom’s diarrhea that is caused by her weak bowels. Because the doctors cut her fistula when she delivered Nancy, Albert, Patti and Jeanie, all 10-pound children.
“They ripped my guts up,” Mom tells the woman at the K-Mart check out counter. “Nancy, Albert, Patti and Jeanie. Backwards the first letters spell Japan.

Cleaning In Between the Cracks

On Tuesday the landlady called to say that mowing the lawn is in the lease, and the lawn needs to be mowed. Yes, it does, I see looking out the window. One of those things I have to get around to. She was sweet and offered to send over a guy and I sure said, "Thank you!" and he fixed it up good.
That gave me the bug to Spring clean, as it's finally May and beautiful out, now that Mother's Day passed. But it was hard to get outside, since this Mother's Day was rainy and cold out, and I couldn't go to the Botanic Gardens like I wanted to get some roses and sun and we went to see Star Trek at the movies instead.
So the landlady's nudging got me out of my house and work. So I bought a new plastic bucket and some Mr. Clean and attacked the kids' bathroom. I should be working, but I have so much to do I can't begin unless I clear my mind. And having this space of mindless, physical motion brings the answers I need. I had to clean the bathroom because it was looking a tad schizophrenic like my mother was, and I worry about Paloma because she has the learning disability and her room and organizational skills are heinous and it looks a lot like my mother! She always undoes the bandaid wrappers and leaves them all over the floor, clothing and towels on the floor, yuck!
So I sloshed around, getting rid of this 1970s era stuff - schizophrenia and filth that was my childhood home on the prairie of East Boulder. And funny because this house I rent now was built in that era, just real close to the foothills and mountains, so a different energy about it. The tub and toilet were filthy, and the toothpaste splattered on the mirror, harkening of childhood. I had so scrub up this cat litter clay that got wet. I mean this place was sparkling by the time I finished it and what a difference! As I work I talk to myself, As The Queen of Bohemia. I think about Justin or Peter or Frank or any of all the suffering I have and if vengeance or anger or fear comes up, I slip to the transcendent where the Queen attitude resides. I no longer go there. I am free from that hell and karma. A Queen over rides such petty issues of the world. The Queen is a mother, who holds me and tells me that the world is a beautiful and safe place and that love and goodness do prevail. She tells me to expect only glorious life, and all its demons are actually her most faithful servants. It is a grounding in the Self. To think positive and move the body in rhythm with it to really get it sunk in. This double Saturn time to really show me rock bottom to finally claim the bottom of the Self, and find that faith again. That it's safe to believe in one's Self. That one is valuable and desired and respected. That there is something to be felt that is good about one's Self, and a knowing that everything will be all right. That success and financial and life abundance are mine. As well as boundaries, respect and value. And that coming from the yogic centered seat of the Self, everything radiates from there. My children, and how important it is to get Paloma whatever tests, tutoring or medical she needs. And how important it is for Alejandro to go to a very good school for his academic progress because he is so bright. I scrub and scrub and scrub. And that's the price of staying here in Boulder, where it is quite expensive to live, but it's worth it. It's beautiful here, where I can hike every morning in the foothills with Pepe. And walk to Paloma's school now (she's switching). So I feel positive about myself and very happy that I have decided to stay here. For at least another year. Moving home to Dad and to purge the house is a regression to negative, fearful thinking. What focus consumed by it's thoughts to move there in the first place? Better served focused on glorious art and service. And that is what is required to make it come about. It's a feeling and a knowing.
So I worked a lot and got caught up on all those piddle details of business and the garage after the kids got home, because I definitely love the outdoors and gardening. Cleaning the garage was satisfying, again, focusing on the eternal present and being in my body and my breath, erasing all history and memory, any residue of dark thoughts and feelings associated with the past and my mother and 1388 Kilkenny Street. The thoughts are not paranoid, over thinking, doubtful and fearful and hanging out in the halls of dungeons and trolls and all those people you attract around you who want to suck your energy dry. But attracting dependable, safe, kind people and resources who support you in your glorious creation. The kids and I got ice cream and we picked up some plants and potting soil. I spiffed up the porch, rearranging my clay pots and plants up the steps while Paloma climbed in the tree and Pepe ran around. I put the garbage cans in the garage and swept everything clean. The house looked great, clean and well -cared for, respected and honored. It reminded me with it's white colonial style and its beauty as if it were a wedding. And I think that is why I dreamt of some weddings a few nights ago. Married to my Self and my children and home. This is how I heal my home, by healing my own heart. And then my children's can heal, and the ancestors can heal, and every one is forgiven and the whole world just opens up and everybody is healed and loved and joyful.
And finally in full gear, I cleaned my bathroom, where if cat pee were there, it was gone. Scrubbing the toilets and rearranging my place where I honor myself and clean myself. To get myself up every morning and put myself together. To shower and style my hair, brush my teeth and put on make up and jewelry. Something my mother never did. When you have a bag lady for a mother who dug in the neighbors' trash cans for a beauty role model, it can be confusing. I pay attention to my appearance and I help Paloma do it too. Good modeling for her. I French-braided her beautiful, thick hair the other day and we made sure the wash was done I have to get at them to pick up and remember, but Alejandro's getting it. He's growing up and understanding how things work. Back to the bathroom, I scrubbed the mold that was beginning to accumulate in my shower. That film that hangs over everything, it's gone. Like the veil of Maya, lifting, and all you see is physics in action. And there is no explaination. At least not with the head. And so, as Dad insists, maybe everything will be over in 2012 as we go into the fourth dimension, so I shouldn't worry about a thing anyways.

The Queen of Bohemia Cleans Her Own House

So it turns out that the gal in the 2 BR, 2BA basement apartment on Speer wants the upstairs unit since I lowered the price. Her name is Valerie and she's a nursing student. Her parents in Phoenix send the rent check every month. I saw her briefly one day recently, heading out for snowboarding. She is this 24-year-old, has this dark hair and white complexion, a sexy, raspy voice and a little silky Yorky dog named Fred. She's moving in already. I figured she would move out of the basement anyway, since i needed to start charging her utilities.
So now I am advertising for the basement and I now realized it was stupid to raise the rent $50 a month after putting $4k in cash to fix it up when the mortgage is underwater, and I had a really good tenant, but that's OK. Because Lakshmi and Parvati area always with me saying, it's all an illusion. Just keep playing the game. Amor Fati. That's what it's all about. The gods are watching this lovely play that you are a star in.
And that's what it is. As I sat in the staff meeting about what to do about my daughter, who we realize that her learning disabilities are emotional. I do believe, all the chaos of my husband's death, finding a father for my daughter and son that led to financial disaster, and now once again on my own in desperate need of a housekeeper because the ants have found the honey mess in the armoire. She just needs a safe place and a lot of love and then she can start to learn. So that's all anybody needs.
The other day I cleaned out the whole kitchen. It was a mess, the ants were coming. I had the kids pull everything out. I bought Mr. Clean scrubby sponges and I attacked it with a lot of loud music and a good six pack of Fat Tire and other things, but that's for a later post. Cleaning is wonderful, mindless. When you are creative and think a lot and expend a lot of energy creating, pure physical exertion is a fantastic counterpart. Moving mindlessly with motions of clean in hand. I got a special tile brush from Target to get into the cracks and get the filth out. Any lingering self doubt and fear. It's gone. I got down on the floor and scrubbed. I put a big cloth down and used my feet to clean the filth off the floor. I felt confident, fine. I figured the landlady would appreciate it. Just like I appreciate the tenants on Speer and Arvada taking care of my property. I was focused in the transcendent rather than duality, because that's where Lakshmi and Parvati area all hanging out and it's good to see them there. It's a nice feeling to be there. There is a deeper reality that sustains you. You go there when you lose everything and you say, "Ah! I was such a coward, and now I am free!" And you can do anything and things just kind a work out because you have shifted your focus from doomsday negative to this life is fucking fantastic and I can create anything I want to so let's go. Let's get serious. Let's say it's a wonderful life, all of it. All the mess and screwy stuff and betrayal and loss and love and ALL OF IT. And you might as well start some kind of a revolution, now that you see so clearly what and how you are. And you just stand by and watch and love your kids and friends and have a good time cleaning because it's going to change and you will be on to the next scene for the Gods who are watching you and writing your script that you are too creating as you participate in with your thoughts, word and deeds.
The kids are at Opa's house tonight. In order to have two nights alone, I have to go and buy $84 groceries, then drop then at my dad's in east Boulder. It's a lot of work. But it's great to have the time just to write, just to watch a movie in peace, just to have no responsibilities for one day. For yesterday the kids went riding their bikes down to the school and Alejandro called to say Paloma fell off her bike and I had to walk all the way down there and get her. And that was OK. I loved charging up the hill again pulling Paloma on her bike. I commended Alejandro for helping his sister. I said we are getting good exercise and what else is there in life? And today Paloma wore flip flops and insisted that her Converse tennis shoes were in a backpack left at school, and when I found them in the closet I ran them down to the school because today was the Fun Run. No more track and field day at school like when I was a kid and got lots of blue and red and yellow and green ribbons. But run for fun. And that's it. So I did. I ran her shoes down to her and she ran in them rather than flip flops. That's all I can say. That is what I live for and that is why I don't care about all that has happened to me. Love is in the flip flops.

Parvati and Lakshmi in Highlands Square

I drove down to Highlands again to show the apartment. It's a long drive from Boulder. The guy loved it. Hopefully he will put in an application. It is a cute place; it does have value. I feel bad that the former resident, Ken, had to move because I raised the rent, and then now that I'm not going to do more renovations because it just costs so damn much and the mortgage is underwater and I'm unsure if I even WANT to pay the mortgage because my daughter needs special education attention, I had to lower the rent a bit and after all this and spending $1000 in fix up I'm going to get back an extra $35 a month. And all this driving back and forth. Sometimes I think the universe really loves to play tricks on me. But now I am thinking that things are getting easier. Parvati and Lakshmi tell me to just hang in there. It's all an illusion. You have nothing left to lose, so just be free and happy. It's all going to be fine, and you have found definite, strong, secure faith because of all this.
Yes, that's all I have. Faith. When everything falls away, you uncover your true Self, and it's found through pure faith.
I like my little rental. I will keep paying the mortgage. What does it all matter anyway? It's just an actor's job.
People are still signing up for my e-courses, I'm excited about a new web designer and working with Mary to focus on publishing. I love the clarity and I love just running errands and being with my kids. No pressure to save up millions and hoard cash and real estate. Just play the game, stay in the energy of Parvati and Lakshmi in this playful universe. All is well. As long as you are doing what your heart desires and following the dharma, there is nothing to be done.

The Pirate