What I know for sure

Things are never as they seem. This has been the story of my life. What I've concluded is that I know nothing. There is nothing in black and white; it's forever gray, but that too will change. Who I am right now is only this for the moment. Within seconds I'm different. I see things differently. I want different things and I want differently.

I'm discovering the world anew every second. I think of myself like the little kitty at my daughter's apartment who twists her head looking at a shoelace longer than I've seen anyone stare at anything. She's entranced with everything. The wind that blows up her nose is a new experience when she goes outside. She touches the brick on the wall gingerly as if it will disappear if she presses any harder.

The world is not what it seems. It never has been, but I've bought into it for most of my life: pay my taxes, balance my checkbook, go to college, get a degree, get a good job, build a retirement plan... These were constants in my life. These were things I could count on. I followed these rules and life was supposed to be good.

But it never was. I struggled over being off pennies in our business accounts. I stashed away funds like there was no tomorrow in all five of our retirement accounts. I paid bills. I went to church. I paid taxes -- payroll taxes, state income taxes, unemployment taxes, federal income taxes, and on and on and on.

I have nothing to show for all of that diligence. There is no retirement. All five of those accounts got used up before the ink was dry on the divorce papers. The college degree has not gotten me any jobs. There is no security in anything I was told was going to be my security. Having a husband didn't do it. Buying insurance policies -- health, life, term, car, homeowners, renters, malpractice -- didn't keep me safe either.

It has been a hoax. The whole thing. None of it is real. None of it has been worth losing all those nights of sleep when I tossed and turned over every little detail. Did I pay the vendors? Did I return the state's phone call? Did I put enough in retirement for federal income tax?

For years this life and these questions filled the space between my ears. It was a small, draining, and exhausting life. Running, running, running to keep up with what I thought was necessary to keep up with. Never going to bed satisfied with my accomplishments, and always feeling so empty.

Going to bed with someone whose presence made me feel worse about myself was no way to enter into my dream state either. I stayed until I couldn't stay any longer. I stayed until I couldn't take being the miniscule person I was showing up to be.

Four years without that life has turned me upside down and inside out. I've seen reality for what it really is -- fake. I've delved into the quantum realm and found home. I choose living in the world of energy and seeing it as such, knowing that what I do, what I say, who I'm with are all just reflections of me. How do I choose to show up in this flexible, malleable world? It's a continuous process of changing and rearranging what I do with my moments. It's seeing the world of all possibilities and reveling in it. It's feeling the joy in the air around me and embracing it, inviting it to stay.

I wake up now to watch West Wing with a dog on my lap. I drink my coffee and eat my English muffin while listening to dialog that intrigues me. Once dressed and in my studio I arrive at a feeling of intense joy, loving passion. I sit at my desk or at my sewing machine, and I revel at the happiness I feel being surrounded by fabrics, threads, and beads that I've been so attracted to all my life. Once awakened, there's nothing stopping me to delve into what could come from my imagination at that moment. What garment, what piece of art, what writing, what illustrations, what next? It's all one moment of discovery after another. It's pure bliss. It's abundance at its finest. It is heaven as only I can know it.

Staring at the piles of fabrics, the threads heaped, and the boxes of flowers I've fashioned with scraps and beads, I feel blessed. Looking at the aprons I've designed for a wholesale customer makes me feel like a genius. What degree? What job? What anything? Because looking around this room at every art book, every basket of paints, all the clear containers of spools of thread, and rainbows of fabrics, I know what wealth feels like. I know what joy looks like. It is me in this very room surrounded with all that jazzes me. There is no greater wealth, no finer empire than where I sit right now typing on this keypad surrounded by my yards and yards of fabric. And this I know for sure.

brain vacation

My brain has decided to take a vacation and not invite me.

I'm in my studio for the second day this year because I've been residing in bed since New Year's. My brain started hurting last week when I was working on a new design in my studio. On New Year's Eve after seeing It's Complicated and laughing my ass off, I went flying with a friend over McKinney until it became the new year. I'm not sure if my brain landed with me.

It was a full moon and a blue moon. It was also John Denver's birthday. We took off around 11:48 at night. I was in the back seat clicking pictures of the lights and the moon, when the pilot told me to take over. There went my picture taking, at least the shots that weren't blurry.

I love to fly. I love to take off. It's one of my greatest highs. It's the landings I'm not so excited about. I'm not thrilled about taxiing slowly down the runway turning towards the hangars. I don't enjoy undoing my seat belt and taking off my headset.

Takeoffs are exceptionally orgasmic for me. There's not a cell in my body that's not turned on and tuned in. There's something so amazingly seductive about being above it all, seeing the ground below, the ant-sized people until they are nothing but dots and then nothing at all.

This is freedom. This is unadulterated freedom. This is mind-blowing, breath-taking, and well, for lack of anything better to say, just far out! Thank you, John, for that.

The point I want to make though is that I don't think my brain came back down with me. I've been floating and unable to comprehend the simplest of tasks since. Is it because it's been so long since my last flight in a single-engine? Is it because it's been even longer since I had my hands on a stick? (And I mean that in oh so many ways...)

I am meant to live above it all, above the pettiness and drama that resides here. They are not my friends or my people. My people are lax and loose and free. My people see no boundaries or reason to blame. Situations and people in their lives are clear mirrors to their own thoughts about themselves. They are grateful instead of blaming. They are in joy instead of in sadness. You ought to feel their excitement when I'm up in the stars. When I'm steadying my camera lens at the blue moon outside the cockpit.

It's the stars and the clouds and the sky and the moon and the sun that's home to me. Coming back down, feeling the tires land on the runway, and the propeller slow down makes my brain take a vacation without me.

Next time I'm going with it.

one crazy psychedelic blur

I just got off the phone with a man. Not so unusual except that this man has been in my life more on the phone than in person. Interesting way to keep a relationship going. I've never done this before, but I must say it's tantalizing and very fulfilling in the strangest ways. It's made me use my energy to tap into him so that I can feel him without his physical presence. I can feel him without sometimes even thinking about him. I may be working on a new design in my studio when suddenly a rush comes over me from feet to head. I can be walking down the hall when passing through a pocket of him. He washes over me.

I am content living here without him. I've never felt that way about a man before. Always it was a must-have, a must-see-him overwhelming feeling. How I feel about him energizes me, revs me up to do more here, to create more, to envision more, to expand more. Would I love to have him come through my studio door? You bet I would, and I'm okay without that happening also.

My missing him comes at unexpected moments like last night at Cadillac Pizza Pub listening to live blues and sipping wine with a dear friend. I missed him most last night. I knew if he had been there the music would have been that much more sweeter. I miss touching him, my shoulder against his. Something that small, that minute is something I miss more than I thought possible.

Another thing I miss is kissing him. You know, those quick pecks on the lips when we'd be standing outside in downtown Steamboat, making plans for later in the evenings. Outside Boathouse Pub before driving to my apartment after drinks or on the sidewalk on Lincoln Avenue after coffee at The Steamin' Bean.

It was fun getting out of the shower with a towel on my head and in he'd walk through my front door, stripping off his clothes, and scooping me up.

Or, sitting at Mambo's bar with Jamie after work on a Friday drinking a Cabernet and hearing about her day when suddenly in the stool beside me would be this delicious man. He would just know where I was and show up. Uncanny. It never ceased to surprise me.

And now there's another New Year's Eve without him here, or is he? Or, was he here last year? Sometimes my world gets so jumbled that nothing seems clear anymore. There are no blacks and whites. There's this great big beautiful fuzziness of electric colors, the colors of rainbows swirling around me creating realities that are so fleeting and magical. One blurs into another and into another until I know for sure one thing -- I know nothing.

On West Wing yesterday morning, Leo, chief of staff to the president, tells his deputy: "I no longer know what winning looks like."

It's all just one crazy psychedelic blur. It's an acid trip that doesn't go away.

Sorrow as Celebration

Sorrow as celebration. I read that in a magazine this morning. The author recommended, or really insisted, that our ability to relish in polar opposite emotions was essential to well-being. Why not? There are moments of deep sorrow that I feel the most alive, that the right word or phrase alters my life. In sorrow I can see through illusions that I would not have otherwise seen. In sorrow, I remember the depths of my love for another, the expansive and overwhelming knowingness of emotional pull for someone I love so deeply that words spill out in ways that wouldn't have otherwise.

It takes sorrow for me to open the floodgates of emotion, as does the feeling of joy. So, what's the difference between the two? After massive digs into the caverns of my sorrow, I feel blessed, whole, and new, as happens with excessive overflowing of joy. The deepest sadness allows extraordinary avalanches of bliss. And the highs of my ecstasy brings forth the ability to sink into the underbelly of great sadness and excavate anew. Ah...it becomes refreshing dynamite that breaks apart the unnecessary to make room for the magnificent.

So, I say celebrate sorrow. Thank you, Tammy Fischer, for bringing that to my attention this morning. I feel new again.

magic in music

Last night was one of the most magical and beautiful nights of my life upstairs in my new studio I share with Karen Klassen, owner of Spoons and Spoons Garage.

Lights shining on my fabrics and beads.
My friend Sonja sitting in the orange wicker chair eating Rick's cheeseburger.
Piles of threads on the table.
Fabric scraps scattered along the floor like bread crumbs.
And Buzz Andrews singing in the background. With the window opened it was like having Buzz in the studio with me. My feet tapped on the hardwood while layering textures of fabric.

It was a Buzz Andrews night. Again.

And then tonight I got to hear him again, but this time I saw him. I talked with him. I hugged him. I laughed with him. Not only is he a great singer and musician, but he's an even more devoted husband. There's nothing sexier than a man talking so wonderfully about his wife. Thank you, Buzz, for being my driftwood. You make me believe there is a continent full of amazing men.

room for scootching

It's a cloudy day here on the square. I'm alone in the spa as all the practitioners are elsewhere on this Friday afternoon. I volunteered to stay behind and woman the fort. Curled leaves blow past the French doors, and I watch a pink-shirted woman eating lunch across the street at Cafe Malaga.

This is my life. I sip on chai tea from Coffee 'n Cream and receive texts on my new Sprint phone from my McKinney friends. With one, we're sending pictures back and forth on the latest tea mug designs and with another, we're expressing our mutual admiration.

A woman wearing sunglasses and long bleached hair hops into a monster SUV while cars scootch over in the other lane to allow her room for scootching. Room for scootching. We all need it. Last night I needed it. There was a full house here with cackling women, and I had to scootch to the back room away from loud. Loud was not my friend last night. Quiet and calm were twins that wanted to bunk down with me instead, and I was more than willing to make room for them. However, they didn't show up here last night, so I took a walk with the twins around the square instead.

It was lovely.

I didn't hear any loud music coming from Cadillac's last night. The only sounds I heard were those coming from Malaga's where a guitar was being strummed and a heavenly voice singing with it. I couldn't keep myself from joining friends inside and drinking a bottle of Roda red wine. There were dates wrapped in bacon on toothpicks, a mound of spinach in the middle of glazed shrimp, Pelligrino bottles, and a square plate of olives dressed in every shade of green. Gold painted walls with photos of the beautiful owner and her daughters. Tony at the ready with more plates topped with tapas. Annie with hugs and excitement about her new move around the corner -- Malaga's is going bigger. And the red wine enjoyed with two of the most amazing people on earth. I am so blessed.

It's a beautiful life. It's full. It's inspiring. It pushes me. It thrills me, and sometimes exhausts me, but I love it. I just love it, and thoroughly love all those involved.

So, right now all is quiet and peaceful as the police officer rides past the French doors on his bike. A grandpa holds his grandson while walking down the sidewalk, a mom pushes a stroller, and a shop owner sweeps the sidewalk in front of her door. A Jaguar in mint condition drives by, followed by a Ram truck covered in mud.

I'm able to write all this after leaving a Chamber meeting that RejuveNation LifeSpa sponsored at 7:30 this morning and before the spa fills back up with women at another nightly event tonight.

Right now I sit before my computer and breathe calmly. I know the quiet is short lived, and I am so grateful.

For Amelia....

"You did not come forth to face reality. You came forth to spring off of reality. You came forth to let the reality be the basis from which you take flight.

And that is really what we want you to hear. We want you to be in love with the contrast that produces the desire. And we want you to milk those new desires for everything they are worth.

When you get a new desire, if it is big or if it is small, we want you to fantasize around it and give your attention to it, and take every bit of pleasure you can from the power of your mind knowing that manifestation will follow.

But it is not your manifestation that we are here rooting for. It is your moment-to-moment thrill with the power of your flight."

The above quote is from Abraham-Hicks.

I have been obsessed with flight since September 2004 when I took my virgin flight over the mountains from Aspen to Gunnison, a place where I had held huge dreams for myself. That flight to the dream world of two 18 year olds was a huge awakening for me. My pilot was a former college friend who I hadn't seen in almost twenty years and to be able to fly back to a place where we thought we could do anything and be anyone was intoxicating. We sat in the W Cafe where we had back in 1975 and talked about what had happened between then and 2004. How did we end up being the people we were? How could that have happened?

We plotted and forged and reminisced, and it all felt so naughty and enticing. Could we possibly take a leap? Could we possibly make twists and turns in our present lives to become who we thought we were going to be?

He didn't. I did. He's still in Aspen with the same life. I'm nowhere near Aspen figuratively or literally. I leaped. I went home and set the wheels in motion for a single life far away from where I had buried myself in marriage.

And here it is 2009 and just a few days since I saw the movie about Amelia Earhart. I've ravaged every book I can find about her disappearance, and amazingly enough I find many missing puzzle pieces to my own life that have just created more questions and less answers.

It's flight that is foremost on my mind. I cannot listen to an engine overhead without looking up to check whether it's fixed landing gear, high wing or low wing, twin engine or single. I dream about my hand on the yoke, full throttle, and feel the thrill of the nose wheel lifting from the runway.

I don't know who Amelia was. I don't know myself half the time either, but I do know this: It's the moment of liftoff that is the most exhilarating. The possibilities are limitless. The insignificance of what's on the ground becomes minuscule until it all evaporates in the clouds. I bet Amelia felt it too.