June 2017

When any of the women in my old subdivision were pregnant and getting close to giving birth my dad would invariably grab his car keys and do this ridiculous dance on the beach. The Baby Bringing Dance I guess. I was embarrassed by this as a kid, now I find it hilarious.

The women would always say “Be careful Jon, that looks like a rain dance.”

Then the babies would come, and sometimes the rain.

I remember being able to calculate how much longer we had to play at the beach b y watching the clouds coming over the lake. Those slight puffs of cool air whispering “not long now”, and begrudgingly packing up our things and heading home before we got soaked.

Things change.

I find myself praying for rain.

And the gods see fit to manifest my prayers in thunderstorm risks, watches and warnings.

They have been plentiful, the watches and risks anyways. But, I want a warning, gimme an alert. High winds, torrential downpours and the sky cracking open with thunderous roars and big badabooms.

Mama Nature has seen fit to bless us with spectacular light shows in the evenings when they are of no use to me other than lulling me to sleep or making it unpleasant to go out for a smoke break at work depending.

I’m fucking freezing today.

I shouldn’t be, but I am. Funny how the body gets used to something and how cold it gets when that is taken away.

Everything is a metaphor, always.

It was 30 degrees for two or three days. Nice and hot.

We found a new spot to swim. A quarry 45 minutes away.

To get in the water you gotta jump.

I’m not a jumper, I am a walker inner. I grew up on a lake with sandbars. That is how I do things. Slowly then all at once.

Letting my lower limbs become acclimatised to the temperatures and only after this can I dive in.

To put this in perspective I live in Canada and we got from 30 below to 30 above depending on what equinox is closest.

Summer finally came after we skipped over spring entirely with snow days in May.

February was downright balmy, but we paid for it.

But enough about the weather.

I did that thing again where I posted something without thinking it through. The last something, about the nothing I am feeling.

I am uncomfortably numb.

Swimming last year, that was the terminology we used. “You can be in for 2 (or 10) minutes before you numb out.”

It was like that from June to July. The lake never flipped like mine used to. Storms and waves would roll in and the water stayed cold. Storms are supposed to push the surface warmth to the shore.

Then there was the Lion’s Gate night in August, full moon, skinny dipping in water warm enough to just float like we were still in the womb. No numb, just soft wet caresses, belly laughs and happiness.

I can’t get happy right now.

That is the first part of what should have been one long babbling post.

It is eluding me right now. I know I have been there but I can’t remember how to get there.

The beach we frequented last year is gone. Like totally gone. Dunes sheared in half and then just water. Nowhere to sit and bask in the sun before running in to cool down.

That stretch I walked along the beach one warm day in February with Lumberjack is gone. Doesn’t exist.

But there were swans and ducks and we walked. I know we did.

I drove by that pier every day for work and I watched the water rise.

If I put my mind to it I could feel the cold concrete pressed against my back and his colossal warmth pressed against my front. And put my mind to it I did.

“And in this moment, I am happy, happy…I wish you were here.” Incubus

I was happy. I might well get that happy again.

Once upon the Facebook there was a random floating copy/paste status that said “type your name and the word needs into google search and post the results.”

Apparently “Sarah needs love and batteries”, in that order.

Sounds about right.

I can add to that list.

I need a hard reset, I need to know my worth, I need someone who sees it, I need to listen to my friends. I need to be alone for a while. I need to finish this fucking book and get it to the editor. I mean it’s technically done but I gotta go over it one more time.

I need to stop with the ‘one more time’. Step up or fuck off. I need to learn what the word done means.

Sarah means Princess in Hebrew and discontent in Greek, I am both of those things, not in that order.

I once wrote, the worst thing about making something out of nothing is when the nothing starts to show through.
That’s all there is right now, nothing.

Sarah needs something.

Gemini season is not being kind to me this year. I look forward to it like Christmas, except that one year when a Mercury retrograde ate it all up like the Nothing from the Never Ending Story.

Even Rob at  https://www.facebook.com/Rob-Brezsnys-Free-Will-Astrology-133041234078/ knows

Actress Marisa Berenson offers a line of anti-aging products that contain an elixir made from the seeds of a desert fruit known as prickly pear. The manufacturing process isn’t easy. To produce a quart of the potion requires 2,000 pounds of seeds. I see you as having a metaphorically similar challenge in the coming weeks, Gemini. To create a small amount of the precious stuff you want, I’m guessing you’ll have to gather a ton of raw materials. And there may be a desert-like phenomena to deal with, as well. 

I want out of the desert.

I was to go ‘away’ twice before the end of June, but here I sit. We aren’t going anywhere.

Things fell apart, the center didn’t hold.

I held, for as long as I could. I usually do, it’s my M.O.

But right now it is looking like a limb torn off (Band of Horses) and like all phantom limbs it is gonna ache and itch for a long time comin’. Better to cut it off now though.

I wasn’t happy.

Like a low grade fever that just slowly sucks all your energy until getting dressed becomes a chore, eating is optional and all I want to do is sleep. Happiness is a shimmering mirage that I can’t reach.

I was talking to my son the other day about the concept of happiness. His friends think he is a mess, and in truth I have been a little worried too. Not now.

Him: It’s better than before. I think for a long time I was actually lying to myself

Me: About?

Him: I wasn’t really that happy before. I’ve just actually come to terms with it

Me: I mean no one is. Life is contentment and just existing with moments of profound up and down that sometimes drag on

Him: But I just mean I was lying to myself when I said I was happy a lot, I was more miserable then than I am now. Now I just show it

Me: It’s not lying so much as hindsight

Him: All my friends have been saying I seem worse than ever but the truth is the opposite

Me: I didn’t understand what actual happiness was until lately

Him: It’s hard

Me: It was all the stuff I took for granted. Peaceful days. Good days with you. Paid bills. A good sleep a good laugh. Not all the big shit, although that’s nice too.

Him: Those are what’s important

Me: We need Canada’s Wonderland passes…speaking of the big stuff

I could use an actual rollercoaster instead of the proverbial one I have been on. It’s just all up and down, no twists, turns or exhilaration, just low grade nausea and an impending sense of are we there yet, I kinda want off.

I love that my son is light years ahead of where I was at 21. I was stumbling and fumbling trying to figure out how to be a parent with no idea who I was as a person. We learned together. He watched everything I went through and god bless him he learned from my mistakes.

Why can’t I?

So shed your skin and let’s get started (Hunters & Collectors)

Sarah needs DMT, to set everything on fire and start over, to get lost, to find my damned self.

And I definitely need love and batteries.

I chime in with a “Haven’t you people ever heard of closing a goddamned door?” Panic at the Disco

Anyone who has ever read anything I have ever written knows this is not my strong suit.

Nostalgia and Forgiveness are two of my many middle names.

But what happens on the day the full strawberry moon is in Sagittarius, with Saturn at the helm and Jupiter picked today to go direct?

Shits gotta stop.

Doors gotta close.

I gotta move. Be it up, down or across. I can’t stay here.

I would usually play a full white girl card and declare I am unable to even.

Gonna smudge, salt and sprinkle holy water all over my life and oust the stagnant juju.

It’s not bad juju per say, but something has to give and change and leave.

I think it’s high time to close the god damned door.

It seems to be happening across the board. All of my friends in this long drawn out stasis waking up suddenly, realizing we are on this not-so-merry-go-round and we are all feeling a little nauseous and want off now.

I liken the universe to a giant machine, with wheels and cogs, a clockworks perhaps but with its own sense of stellar timing, nothing like the linear ideals created by man. I know I know everything is as it should be, all our problems have been solved we just haven’t gotten to that point in time yet, whether or not it’s clear the universe is unfolding as it should blah blah blah. But what about what I want?

It’s not in the cards or the cogs it seems. Every turn taking me further and further away.

And it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.

And I am running out of time.

I woke up this morning with a profound and deeply urgent need to rewind time. Go back to the very beginning. When I was a teenager, when I first woke up to some semblance of this self that I am now.

I don’t know if it had something to do with a dream or if I am just not digging this current path I am on. But the need to regress and revert was overwhelming.

I am missing something.

When what I want and what I need and some damned thing that is going to make sense later is occurring I feel like those cogs and wheels that usually turn fairly smoothly hit some kind of transition position and all of the sudden there is a grinding of gears, a screaming of metal. Jerks and pulls. Fits and starts. And all I want to do is duck and cover my ears and wait for it to be over.

But alas. There are bills to pay and a life to live and the dog needs walking and I know. Pretty soon the cogs will find their counterparts, the gods will grease the wheels once again and it will be smooth sailing for a time.

I usually hate this.

It is human to both want change and resist it.

Maybe it’s just the long awaited and final arrival of summer time. The sunshine making everything look new again. The trees and flowers in full bloom.

But it feels right. Terrifying, but right.

Time to put the past in the rear view and get the fuck out of Dodge.

But for tonight, I will just clean and pray for guidance.

Outta Dodge sounds great, but I wouldn’t mind looking at a map and seeing where I am heading.

Choices always were a problem for you.
What you need is someone strong to guide you.
Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow,
what you need is someone strong to guide you..
like me, like me, like me, like me

If you want to get your soul to heaven, trust in me.
Now don’t judge or question.
You are broken now, but faith can heal you.
Just do everything I tell you to do.

Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow.
What you need is someone strong to guide you.
Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow.
Let me lay my holy hand upon you.

My Gods will, becomes me.
When he speaks, he speaks through me.
He has needs like I do.
We both want to rape you.

Tool Opiate

Simmer down just a lil there Maynard.
Rape is not one of the big Christian no-no’s ever notice that?

I get the sentiment though. Giving yourself over to God, brides of Christ. It’s a lil rapey.

Maynard was raised in the church, it colors a lot of his work and I understand that.

I was raised outside of the church and it colors everything I do so ya, I can empathize to a degree.

I had to find my own spirituality.

I think we all should really.

My ex wrote a book proving the existence of god.

He isn’t Christian at all, Atheist actually. Polyamorous pragmatist with Buddhist tendencies to be totally fair.

But ya.

He proved God exists.

I can’t remember how exactly, something about collective consciousness manifesting in actuality.

Seems we accidentally manifested a version of God who’s inactive and apparently Lucifer is down here causing death, cancer, rape, war, child abuse etc…so God gets away with not doing a whole lot, and Satan gets blamed for actual occurrences. I feel like that system is a little flawed.

So be it.

Not my circus nor my monkeys. In fact if any God worth his salt, who created this amazing planet for us to live on, saw us putting monkeys in circuses or any of the other fucked up shit we do to each other or our fellow inhabitants of the planet should have thrown and tantrum of epic proportions some time back in ancient Rome. But those Gods were human, emotional, vengeful, generous and fallible. We traded them in for this sleek new version and he isn’t doing a lot of smiting these days. We are overdue for a reckoning. We could really use another flood down here.

Again, we have managed to manifest this omnipotent being into existence and then held him responsible for sweet fuck all.

This I don’t get. Too many juxtapositions and glaring discrepancies.

But if you need a security blanket and you want to call it God, by all means. Whatever gets you through the night. I get that.

That was not the point of this post.

I know someone in the beginning stages of AA.

And since the second word is anonymous I shall not say whom.

They are struggling with the idea of giving themselves over to a higher power.

I get that. It is a little culty and preachy. So how do I help this person find their version of god?

I have my own shortcuts to the divine.

Anyone who wants to say that caffeine is not a drug has not ingested 5 cups on an empty stomach, on very little broken sleep, whilst emotionally charged, mildly traumatized and euphoric due to a warm sunny day mid-March. I think I saw god. (Facebook Status, mid-March apparently)

I see god often.

Or my version of god that is.

He lives in the sunshine. In the funny old lady noises my dog makes. In the dimple on that boys right cheek. In the color of his dissipating irises when he looks at me and his pupils dilate. In the first feeling of his hands on me and every moment after. In certain tones and notes of particular songs. In sunrises, sunsets, skinny dipping. In love and laughter and most definitely in that first sip of coffee in the morning.

Heeeeey. Wait a minute.

Isn’t the Devil in the details?

I might actually worship Satan. Satanists believe that women are valuable creatures not chattel. That our base instincts are not flaws to be beaten down, but gifts to explore. Ya, I think I’m team Morningstar.

My AA person expressed jealousy that I find joy in walking along the beach picking up rocks.

I do.

I am definitely a little things person. I wasn’t always.

I would reserve my happiness for the big things and they came so rarely, ended so quickly, left me feeling really empty afterwards.

I had to look inwards. Quiet the outside world. Be in the moment and realize what actual brought me joy, no matter how small.

Once upon a time I sat in Milton, one warm summer morning, sipping my coffee on the back deck, sun rising, dew twinkling, watching an aerial dogfight play out between a thousand dragonflies, witnessing the impossible flight of the bumblebees, and being privy to intermittent visits of a dozen hummingbirds it dawned on me… Only the small things matter. That is where my god lives.

My friend’s might lie in the memory of temples climbed. The smell of incense, the chanting of monks, the realization that we are all small and only part of something larger.

That seems like a good place to start looking for God or something godlike.

Fuck, I haven’t been writing lately and it’s kinda killin me. Its feeling “like a limb torn off” Band of Horses.

“I am writing about you in the blog this week, hope that’s okay.”

I said this to both my Human Serotonin and the girl we call S___ Moon at work last night.

They were fine with it. Human Serotonin knows everyone gets nicknames. I have to remember this when speaking of my exes, she doesn’t know their actual names. She asked what I was gonna call all of my friends exes, starting with hers…Six Nine the Tailbone Destroyer, Giant was already taken. Everyone else’s kinda falls into the category of Drug Dealing or Drug Addict pieces of shit, except S___ Moon’s…we have always called him Big Dick, it suits him and I couldn’t tell you what his real name is. He’s a dick.

So, why all the talk of exes?

Because apparently, wherever the moon is, or some planetary alignment of massive backsliding cosmic fuckery, we are all running headlong backwards into the arms of our exes. Myself included.

I try not to carry an air or moral superiority, especially with my friends. I know exactly what it feels like to fall down seven times, and I know the only important thing is standing up the eighth. I was stuck like glue to ex hubby, for years. Even after I escaped Perdition we still talked, until he read ye olde blog and realized who I really am.

For all intents and purposes…a turbo slut.

Luckily, I have since surrounded myself with friends who also love fucking and do not judge me. And the ex I have gravitated back to is quite fine with how much I enjoy sex.

So there’s that then.

But what is with the exes lately? Not just me, but ALL my girls, both the core group and those who have their own separate orbits around us?

I feel like I am on the Millennium Falcon, just floating out in space just as I realize ‘that’s no moon’ I am already in the tractor beam getting pulled back in. Powerless to stop it, and I don’t really want to. Feels like I am being pulled back home.

It’s my 43^rd run around the sun. Maybe slipping back into something comfortable and familiar isn’t a bad thing. I can already see that things are better this time than they were before.

Biker Body Pillow once said “Sarah, you aren’t psychic, I don’t believe in that shit. But I’ll give you this. You have a memory like a steel trap, a mind that can see all angles and you read patterns like Rain Man counts cards. This is why you think you know what people are gonna do before they do it.”
BBP was rarely wrong about much of anything and he ain’t wrong about me.

So what is to be done with these patterns I see?

What good is it?

I can’t count cards that I know of. Math eludes me. Angles, engines, square roots…nope. I cannae.

Give me word problems and I will lay them all out for you.

Aaaaand then you’re just gonna do whatever you want anyways. As will I.

I am getting better at trusting my gut, not doing the things that make my insides twist and turn. I have found that it is infinitely easier to avoid the knots than to try and untie them after the fact.

But that’s just me.

I have done something that I now believe to be uncommon.

I have sat in my loneliness, I have seen my flaws and shrugged my shoulders at them.

I have watched everything spiral out and in again and I honestly cannot begin to tell you what is better. When everything is circling close and comforting or when you are way out at the edges and you can look inwards to get a fresh perspective and see all the things for what they are. Zoomed in or out, both views have good things to offer.

It’s when everyone and everything goes off the rails at the same time and you forgot to put on your seatbelt and there is a rough transition that feels like it’s never gonna end. Like a needle skipping on a record of what should be your favorite song but it’s just noise and it hurts your head.

I can relate to Sex and the City. I am a girl, I have 3 close girlfriends, a Mr. Big and this blog.

And when everybody goes off the rails and leaves me behind to manage the wreckage I am prone to feeling abandoned and/or surrounded by ‘too many Samanthas’. I gotta be Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda all by my damned self while they drink, fuck and make bad life decisions. It’s easier when we take turns, but every once in a while…perfect storm.

And that’s where we’re at.

Gravitational pulls, Death Stars, big dicks and a lot of history repeating.

Like being on Space Mountain at Disney. The first time I rode it I closed my eyes, I was scared and somehow that made it scarier. I am on it again with my eyes open. Its dark and I can’t see the next drop or turn, but I’ve ridden this ride before and I really like it