Signs! Signs! Everywhere! Signs !

I ask for signs, and I get them everyday...


Let me tell you something, folks - I am strange. I am that weird friend. You know who I am talking about. I am that one friend that everyone has who totally dismisses the idea that there is an entire multitude of people who think that I am "funny-peculiar," and I tell you what, I would not have it any other way. If you are even a small part of my life (and I am talking infinitesimal, even), know now that it is not a mistake - I asked Spirit to enrich me with your presence, and as per usual, Spirit did not let me down.

Spirit never does.

HEY ! PAY ATTENTION !


OK, you know when you are thinking about something or someone and suddenly they text you, or the song that you guys liked plays on the radio, or you pass a billboard that automatically makes you think about them, and then they call you? Or...yeah...when you are thinking about someone and they call you?

That is what Carl Jung referred to as Synchronicity. Synchronicity can be called 'meaningful coincidence.' It is not an accident. NOTHING in existence is an accident. Everything that happens does so because it is part of a chain of events that we each set into motion when we first have that thought that we are desirous of something.

I said it last year. I am saying it this year, too.


...and I will continue to say it, over and over again, not because no one is listening but because it is so true and it totally applies to this moment in time. You are reading this at this very moment in time because you have called on Spirit to guide you to do what it was or is that you have so desired to do for many years now, and I am pretty sure that you did not think about it in that manner until right now because it never dawned on you that you are presently watching the miracle called Your Own Life unfold. It is going to take work for this miracle to become your reality, and it is going to be the thing that will permeate your deepest seated Desires as well as those things that you do not desire, and even more, those things, people, situations that you no longer want as part of your present consciousness.

NEVER forget that the Now is the most important time in your life. Now is that time that you are actively thinking about what you are desirous of, and it is at this moment that the seed of Desire has been planted, and yes, I did that on purpose.

We cannot have change in our lives until we actively and willingly see to it that we activate those power centers within us to bring the changes into our own realities. That is the truth, guys, and there is no way around that one truth. NOT ONE OF US can just wish new things into our lives - it takes actual work, takes actual pride in that work, in that intention, and it takes a whole lot of faith, in your Self, in your gifts, and in Whomever It Is that you ask assistance of when no one else is around to hear You do that. There is no shame in asking for assistance - that is the purpose of meditation, of gaining clarity and of simply Knowing that You harbor a deep and persistent, real and true to Life Love and Desire for that thing you Do.

And we all know that when there is that one thing that each one of us does, and it is requested that assistance be given and we get that assistance, there is no better feeling of success than knowing one's own success is already in the Now, because we have had the faith in our gift and our selves to see that intention to fruition. It is not a mistake, those little things that seem like they are flukes or are coincidental - there are NO coincidences. That which we ask for we absolutely get, no matter what it is. Really. What we want, we get, but we really, really have to want it, all the way down to our weary and tired-of-crying bones.

There is another side of this, though, and it will do you very well to not forget that you can have no doubts that you will have what it is that you want, because just as you will get what you want, you also get what you really do NOT want. It happens this way because even though our desire for a thing is real and big and constant, so, too, is the idea that we won't get what we want. In fact, we put more energy into getting ourselves to think that we will never have what it is that we truly and absolutely desire because the horrible truth is that each of us does not believe that we deserve to have whatever it is that we totally want.

Ain't that about a bitch?


Here we all are, all talented and gifted and stuff, and we do not have faith in our abilities, in our intuitive nature, in anything that is remotely ours alone, yet we each depend on that one thing to get us through to the next day, through the bullshit that we all end up having to go through, and when push comes to shove, we want to just give up,preferring to not have to deal with the heartaches that come with trying to bring a dream to fruition.

I know this because about a week ago I went through it myself.

I am in Love with my culture, the Hawaiian culture, and like most other Hawaiian women, as a child I was started with hula by being introduced to it when I was 4 years old. The very first memory that I have of this beautiful and graceful show of Aloha was being a tiny little girl, not quite 4 yet, and seeing my mother dance in our living room. I'd never seen my mother in such beautiful and spiritual repose. And yes, repose is the right word, because hula is entrancing to the point where the mind and the body rest in a quietly awesome spiritual trance.

Even at that time in my life, I knew then what I know now - I am a dancer, I have always been a dancer, and I will always be a dancer. I will dance this dance until I can no longer stand, and even if I have to use a cane, I will figure out a way to dance, cane in hand, beautiful spirit of Love in my heart, because that is, in part, what I was born to do. No, not only dance hula for the rest of my life, but to effectively communicate beauty and grace to the rest of the world as my own personal ministry of Love and Hope.

Hey man, communication is not only the written word for me. It is far more, and hula is only one part of it, just like writing is only one part of it. "That thing" that I do is being masterful at communicating to others, through whatever means needed, whatever it is that a person, or a group of persons, needs to know. I do not know what it is that they need to know, and I cannot tell anyone how it is that they are supposed to make their own dreams come to fruition, at least not in a "Hey, you need to do this and that other thing over there will happen," but more in a "Ya know, maybe you can try to do things this way and maybe what you want to happen will happen...just sayin'..." kind of way.

My gift is that of communication, is that of making clear to others those little signs and such...those little synchronicities which visit our lives and invade our thinking and make us know that it is not only coincidence that we are experiencing what we are experiencing. Again...no accidents....none.

What? Do you need a kick to the head?


If ever there were anything that bugs the crap outta me more than a know it all, it is a know it all who knows nothing and all he or she has are their statistics. These are people who live only from the ego's point of view, and in their own self-aggrandizement they fail to see what is underneath all the pomp and circumstance of keeping up appearances. To these people a coincidence is not meaningful and holds absolutely no truth to it whatsoever. To them facts written in a book are far more believable than are the poetic ramblings of those whose excited demeanor begs the question to be asked, "So, what are you all happy-ass'd for? What are ya, on crack or something?"

To those who believe that what is concrete and what is thought of as 'evidenced' by statistical data and further scientific proof there is no ethereal nature, not only to the Universe but also none to mankind. This is the finest tragedy of all - humankind cannot seem to get its own big old swollen head and swollen ego out of its own damned way, and THAT is the reason why it seems that even as dreams do come true, dreams take forever to do so, and besides, we're all gonna die eventually anyway, right?

Yeesh !!

Whatever it is that you are supposed to be doing will be evident, because that which we are supposed to be doing, that we know we should be doing, that we were meant to do and were brought into this life to do will bring us the most blissful feeling of joy that once experienced can never be copied and will always be sought after. And the funny thing about it being sought after is that in truth the thing that we were meant to do, that we're supposed to be doing will never NOT bring about joy, joy that needs to explanation and no reason for being. It just Is.

The other side of the fun stuff


The thing about having and getting what you want is also knowing that what you do not want you also will get, provided that you concentrate more on what you don't want instead of what you do want. SO, in case you were wondering why it is that every time you wish and ask for things, not only do you get and experience getting what you want, you also get and experience that which you so, so, so do not want as well.

You see, when thinking in terms of what we want, we also tend to think about what we don't want. Then we think about what we don't want in relation to what we do want and what happens then is that we totally forget about wanting what we want without not wanting what we do not want. SO, when you are thinking about what you want, you have to act as though you already have it, as though it is in process, because it really is in process, and no matter what, when you start to doubt that you will get what it is that you want, rip it apart and find out why it is that you believe that you deserve what it is that you want but that you do not believe that you will get it. Once you do that, the rest will follow suit, good or bad - it doesn't matter because we get what we focus our attention on the very most.

Your signs are there


Pay attention to the things that seem like they are coincidence, because that which we deem as being coincidental is really not coincidental but is rather and really instead your sign of things to come. When we ask for the things that are the very wishes of our hearts and souls, it is from the place of the Spirit where these coincidences. When we wish for and ask for things and situations, we pay little attention to the signs and the signals that we should be paying attention to. It could be a song on the radio, or someone can say something that will spark the thought in your head - that, again, is no accident. These are your signs, and it would serve you well to pay attention to them.

Not paying attention makes you have those thoughts that you know you are totally worth what it is that you want, but that you probably are not ever going to have them, because that is what you keep telling yourself.
Here's an idea...do something crazy, like trusting the Spirit which guides you to lead you to where you need to be in order to have the things that you want.

Yeesh!! It ain't rocket science. Ask and receive- that is the Law of the Universe.

It will pan out as soon as you stop breaking the law!!

...Roxanne...

The Enjoyable Chaotic Nature of Change...

Even now, lots of us suddenly are energized


Life is exciting. Whether you want to believe that or not is up to you, but if you thought about it for a minute you would find that even as there are a lot of things that go perceivably wrong on a daily basis, we are all in the middle of this really great, really exciting time in our lives that is more akin to an earthquake than a roller coaster.

Now is the time that we are beginning to see the pieces of our pain and our heartache as they all meld together into the beginnings of a newer version of our lives, and more importantly, our Selves.

I don't know about any of you, but I am so excited I could pee my pants...ok, maybe not, but you get it, right?

The more things change...


It is said that the more things in our lives change,the more they stay the same, and I am thinking it is like this on purpose. I mean, how much fun would it be if everything we did in life always stayed the same without the idea that we all have in our heads and because of our own life experiences that what happens now will happen again and again? If we stayed stuck to that premise of course we would get bored, and of course we would end up like a lot of people are right now - broke, bored, mad, but ever hopeful, at least the majority of us, that is.

There is that certain segment of the population that is always going to be with the  idea in their heads that we are doomed to do things the wrong way, again and again, and to those people I can only say to kiss my Royal  Hawaiian okole. If all you can do is continually see things happening over and over again and you have not yet learned anything at all, then you are a moron - you can change this. The problem is that you already have it set in your heads that this is going to happen over and over and over again, kind of like that sentence I just wrote.

The reason that you keep on going through what you go through is simple - you keep on thinking about whatever it is that keeps on popping up as a pain in the rear end in your life, and as you usually do, you complain and whine and bitch and moan, never realizing that all it takes is to simply learn to accept what is going on and then deal with it by moving on. You cannot get anywhere if you are stuck in park or neutral. You can stand on the gas pedal and waste your gas revving your engine but  the same thing that has been happening will continue to happen - you will run out of gas.

Then you will be stuck...get it?

Preferring the 'maybe' over the guarantee...


I am a Pisces. It is the sign of the two fish swimming in opposite directions. I am good at being a Pisces. I am both outrageous and practical, daring and conservative, mouthy and proper, all at one time. One would think that I would be in a constant state of confusion if they were not paying better attention. I make an art of organized chaos. I cannot function without it. Thinking about a feeding frenzy in a pet store goldfish tank is the only way that I can describe it. The fish know which direction to swim in. They know instinctively where to go to get what they need.

This same thing can be said of people in general, and not only about Pisceans. People are great at being lost in their own self-imposed chaos, and they do this without thought. Problem is, they cannot get out of the confusion. What is worse is that they also cannot see the beauty which comes along with the confusion. Confusion is just another state of thought. If you could sort blocks you can sort thoughts. Seriously.

What I mean by people prefer the maybe versus the guarantee is that we are more prone to do things, even if those things bring us the pain that we cannot learn from because we are too damned stubborn to learn from them. We would sooner go through the guaranteed pain of not trying something new instead of dealing with the maybe that comes with not being sure of the outcome that a different decision, a different way of doing things, a different choice, would bring. We would sooner not try to make a living doing what we want to do because we cannot guarantee that we are going to make any money than we would going with the guarantee of being unhappy with what we are doing to support ourselves. Yes, you might be able to see it as "I only have to be here for x amount of time everyday, and besides, I make great money," and  that would be a change in your thinking, but we all know that this is rarely the thing that happens. What normally happens is that we stay in a job that we hate for the money, and we carry that hatred around with us instead of the new thinking about that same crappy job.

We are more comfortable being uncomfortable and unhappy than we are willing to be momentarily uncertain and uncomfortable with where we are in life and in our job. I would sooner be happy with a job I loved, even if the pay was not all what I wanted it to be, than to be enslaved by a bunch of dead presidents. Doing that only allows us to direct our lives according to the money that we bring in. How sad is that? I mean, yes, having a lot of money is great - I know. I had a lot at one time. Yet, in all that time, in all that madness and all that gluttonous spending that I did over the years, I cannot recall too many times when the feeling of bliss washed over me as much as it does now when I write something, when I choreograph something, when I am busy creating something beautiful for the world to see.

You can't continue to drive yourself crazy over how much you do not have. That is over with. That is tiring. That is old. That is just no longer applicable to the way that you want to live your life. You've gotta believe me on this one. I am serious.

You can only be you, not the Joneses


You know them, the Joneses. They have everything. They are the happy couple that the rest of the hags in the neighborhood cannot stand (because she is just SO cute it is sickening and he is SO dreamy  it just makes you want to hurl). They are those retirees who seem to never be at home (because they come from old money and how dare they live in suburbia instead of in some swanky retirement community). They are those people with whom we each have a problem with, or actually, who our egos have a problem with. We get jealous over silly things, and sometimes we are a mixture of jealousy and anger, and we are crazy, us humans - we prefer it this way!

We would rather wallow in our own feelings of unworthiness, in our own misgivings and assumptions about our neighbors according to our own experiences, our feelings, no matter what they are, good or bad, than we would to try to figure out why it is that what other people have is somehow better than anything that we have or can have.

Do you not know your own spiritual worth? I mean, come on! Look at the faces of the people who you have issues with and see pieces of your own self in their expression. Are they genuinely happy to see you and are you being the spiritual crackhead that you always are, giving them dirty looks and even muttering horrible things in their direction while at the same time you are waving and smiling? How confusing that is to your psyche and also, eventually, your Spirit.

You keep on messing with your Spirit (you know, that thing that you keep letting other people crush?), pulling it in opposite directions and hoping that it will remain in tact. The truth is that the Spirit is better than Tupperware, better than Timex, better than a lot of things, but we have to also remember that all those things all have a way of breaking down.

Hurry up and get here already!


There are some people reading this now who see themselves in this picture that I have drawn for you all. You are waiting for life to happen to you instead of you creating the one that you want!

Well, what the hell are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? You ain't gettin' one! It is time, NOW, to get up off of your draggin' ass and DO something instead of only complain about your sorry life. YOU are the one who matters most in the way that it turns out, and you are also the only one to blame if you never do anything to change it and it never changes. At least if you try to change something, you will know that you have tried.

STOP with the pitying - everyone, just stop it. So, you didn't get the girl, the job, the car, the house, the money, whatever. This means that there is someone who is more suited to you at this point in your life and that you have not been through what it is that you have to in order to get there. The job? What would have happened if you got it and all you saw as its value was its hourly wage? What if you would have gotten there and hated it more than the one that you have now? There  is a reason for every little thing that you go through, that you suffer disappointment in not having, and until and unless you are willing to see the bigger picture in it all, you will always and only see your own life as a series of failures and things that just broke your heart.

Knock it off, would you? You can't see your own greatness if all you are focusing on is what you perceive is your weaknesses. It is not that you have weaknesses, as much as you have things that have to be worked through. We are so bound to the idea that who we are is what we do, what we look like, what we know, when in reality it is a nice mix of those things.

And the only thing that I can say about that is that it is really nice being mixed up all the time !!!


I LOVE YOU ALL !

...Roxanne...

That weird place in between

It seems like things speed up just to slow down


I am an impatient person. I can be patient, but on the whole I do not like to wait. This brings me to these last three years - it has been a Cosmic and Karmic game of "hurry up and wait" in every area of life. It has been a long three years as well - can't find work to save my life, can't get people to sign up to my hula classes, can't seem to sell my books, my stories, articles, what have you. It seems as though every time we, even some folks with whom I keep close counsel with, want or desire something - namely something that will benefit our lives and the loves of our lives - there is something blocking it.

Of course, I have been told by numerous spiritualists that I am being attacked 'on the astral,' and there was one guy who is a good friend of my dad's who swore up and down that the reason I am "being persecuted" is because I have strayed from the 'rigors of the holy ghost,' and yet there are still more people who think that I am not trying hard enough or that I am trying too hard, those who feel like I am too qualified for some jobs and not qualified for others, and of course, there are those who do not hire me because (their words not mine) I am very intimidating on paper. ( OK- whatever...)

At the same time I cannot help also feeling like I am, you are, everyone is at that weird place I like to call 'in  between.'

In between what?...


Well, you know, just...in between...in between jobs, in between living situations, in between this and that. Just in between, in that weird place where we all find ourselves from time to time, that place where if we took a nap we would wake up hopeful that we were no longer in between anything.

In between is that place where all of us end up when we have lost all that we thought were the defining things in our lives. For me those things would be the gimundo golf course home that we ended up losing to the bank back in July of 2008, the other four of the five cars we owned outright, the golf cart, the friends, the life that we built. And here I sit, now, in this very moment, actually grateful that those things are no longer mine, so to speak. I mean, yes, in the back of my mind I will always think of that house as mine, those cars as mine, everything that I lost, mine.

There is also another part of me that tells me all the time that if I want to have those kinds of things again in my life, I have to let go of those things, yes, even the memories of them, because the memories are what are keeping me and you and everyone else who has gone through this sort of stuff in the 'in between.' And I am finding out just how bad it is to unwittingly want to stay in the 'in, between.'

Hanging  on to things just keeps them there and keeps us there, too


I will admit to being a person who hangs on to things for too damned long. I get it from my mother, and my little sister has that whole "hang on to it for sympathetic reasons" thing going on. I have lost so many things in these last three years that any more now losses do not affect me as badly as they might someone who has not yet learned the fine art of letting go. I know that if I do not release the pain from the loss of these things I will never  be ok. I  will never be completely ok with what lies ahead of me, and that is a way bigger loss that I  will have to face and I am pretty sure that it is sooner than later that it will happen.

It is like trying to keep the memory of people who have died when we were children alive the way that we think they would have wanted us to. We can't do that to them, because that keeps them bound to us here in this world and they have another life to move on to. This same thing can be said of the loss of things that we had and that we felt and still feel are ours. We cannot move ahead if we continue to hang on to what was.

The Adolescence of our middle age


Maybe it's just me, but it seems like there are a LOT of people who are my age, who have all the same facets of life that I have, who are just a short distance away from where I am right now - stuck, in between.
It seemed so dramatic, adolescence, with its mix of promise and peril, and right now, at this time in our lives (and thanks to social networking sites like Facebook we get to have those same feelings of misgiving, complete with high school friends and that one weird kid everyone used to either loathe or fear) we are sort of in that same predicament, where nothing seems permanent, and everything seems to be ten times bigger than it was back then, but actually is now.

Adolescence was a time when we were unsure of ourselves, of the things we thought we wanted, of who we really were, and now we are all feeling those same things, all over again, but this time, we are told that it counts, that the losses will affect us in profound and ugly ways, and like then, our parents are bailing us all out.

And it sucks...it really, really sucks - a whole lot.

Things that we all thought were permanent end up being something that we can only have in dreaming, and things that we want seem to be farther out of our reach than they really are. It sucked being a teenager when we were teens, but now that we are middle agers, it still sucks and the stakes are way higher.

However...

Human beings are prone to thinking in terms of losses. We like to hang on to them as though they are all we have, when really what we have from the losses is the pain and the memory that won't leave us be. Yet, the one thing that no one ever thinks about is that we learn, whether we want to or not, something from everything that has ever visited our lives, hurt us, is now gone and only a memory. If we bothered to learn from the things that hurt us, the next time we get hurt we will fare much better.

I liken this time in life for many of us as our second chance at adolescence because then, like now, we were so unsure of who we were, of what we were supposed to be doing at these times in our lives. Like then, now we are all in the midst of a confusion which permeates the thinking and makes us want to cry tears of bitter mourning. And we should, cry, that is, because it is the only thing that we can do anymore.

Sure, we can get angry, but it won't change anything and we will still have to suffer the losses. We can get mad all we want, but it won't change anything other than our state of physical and mental health. We can be hopeful that what we lost we can have back, but in reality and at the deepest core of us we know that what was won't ever be again, and a lot of us are sad because of it.

I say that we should all forget about the pain - three years is a long time to be in pain, don't you think? I don't want to die young , and most assuredly I don't want to suffer physically for what happens to be something that is only a vague memory. It is not the loss of the thing that we suffer as much as the memory of the pain and the shame and the guilt that we felt that haunts us. We have to let go of those things. They are not the only things that we have to hang on to. We forget that in all the losses we also gain things. We gain the ability to deal with adversity, and we learn to have patience when it seems that that which is large and looming will eat us.

It is not going to eat us, I promise.

If we do not learn, if we hang on to the memories that plague us and make us cry...


We end up sick, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, which leads to our being physically sick. I know this, because I live with a sick person who is sick because he cannot deal with all the losses and in the losses there is still that mixture of not being able to rebound to what was.

We are not meant to be back at square one, or five, or even ten, namely if those things that we lost no longer serve us well enough to make a difference, not only in our lives but those of others as well. If we live in yesterday, today is impossible to live through, and don't even start thinking about tomorrow, because tomorrow never comes for those who still live in the loss and the pain of yesterday. If you live there, this means that you are having a hard time coping with the loss of your things, and that you are not learning what you should.  Things are replaceable. Things can be had again. You cannot, though, go back to the last thing you knew as "being happy." It is better at this point in time to be at least minimally satisfied with being 'in between.' We struggle to keep the lifestyle we had, never minding that it is killing us from the soul, out. We are so hard headed about these things, and we would prefer that it not be brought back into knowing. Well, it's here, and y'all have got to face it. Sooner is always better than later, and right now, we are hinging on later, guys. Later is not a good time to do it. Right now, though, is.

We have to listen to the things that are not being said, because just as there is no music without the silence between the notes, there also is no learning from the losses that sit silently and still in the halls of our spirits. We cannot allow the past to be the thing that dictates what we have in the future. Sometimes we have to think that what lay waiting for us and ahead of us is way better than what it was that we lost. Sometimes we have to believe that everything, no matter how cliche' it may sound and may be, happens for a purpose and if we mess with the chain of events just enough, we find that we are pertinent in the grander scheme of things.

Sometimes, it is the beauty in the mess that we create that teaches us that we are not what we were, not who we were, not that person who once was the owner of that house, those cars, that life and that who we have become is a purer sense of who we really are. Everything comes to an end, but that is because we can have no new beginnings without the end of the old.

SO, in knowing this much, we must think, too, that this is our second chance at growing. We are getting a second chance at those years when it seemed that we had too many pimples, that the cute boy in school would never look twice at us, and that we would never make anything of our confusing and crazy lives. Losing everything does have its upside - you just have to look for it.

...Roxanne...

Simon, Schuster, a chick with no clue and how this all relates to the ego

You can call me jealous, and I might very well be, but COME ON!

I have never, ever even bothered to watch a reality show that sounds like "murky whore." Not now nor ever shall I bother to sit through an episode, ever. My big issue with this particular show is that one particularly popular character on that show was recently handed a book deal. Am I jealous? Well, when thinking in the mindset that books are the things that we keep encouraging our kids to open and read, and looking at the problems that we face anymore with literacy, with the idea that there are a lot of parents in the world who keep on straddling both sides of the brain-goop fence, and with the idea that there is a LOT of money to be made writing anything, why is it that publishing giant Simon and Schuster has decided that a certain unnamed female character on the show that rhymes with the words 'murky' and 'whore' was talented enough to actually pen a novel? I mean, in order to write anything at all, doesn't a person sort of have to have a fucking clue about words and how they are strung together in a sentence that makes sense?

Jealous? No. Angry? Oh HELL yes I am!!!

Yep, call me a word hag, or call me an old word hag, or you can even call me a jealous word hag bitch, the bottom line is that this is a slap in the face to people like me - the writers of the world, and I am not the only one who feels a little on the "why oh WHY did you do this, S&S? WHY??? Doesn't that stupid bitch have enough already? What about this stupid bitch? I am a better writer, surely than THAT, aren't I???" And though I know that it probably is not the most attractive way to be about anything, it is what it is, and right now, it is the idea that anyone, namely a huge publisher such as Simon and Schuster, even though I know that it is all about the money in this case, would even THINK to put her name in the same sentence as "...new book has hit the shelves." Ugh !

The real problem is not that this was handed to her

The real problem is that people think that she has a working brain cell enough to pick up a pen, period. (OK, no that is not it either, but I just couldn't resist saying it).

The real problem is that no one is bothering to tell her the ugly truth (that she is a loud, obnoxious tramp who is really not all she thinks she is, and yep, I would tell her to her face...really, I would). No one is telling her that at the moment, she is what is 'hot,' and she is only this right now because of her television presence, and nothing more than that. As soon as the new Stackie or Skanky comes along this little tart is going to be out of sight and out of mind, sitting atop a stack of her 'book' and wishing upon wish that she had bothered to learn to do something OTHER than whatever the hell it is that she does on that show that rhymes with the words "murky" and "whore."

Hot eventually becomes warm, and warm becomes room temperature, and eventually...

Have you ever thought about what happens to old rock stars when they are no longer 'hot'? (if you want to know, Google Motley Crue's Vince Neil and Skating with the stars...it's all there in vibrant and shocking and shameful HD color) They end up trying too hard to be something they were never thought to be - human, with human foibles and capable of making tremendous errors in judgment. (Again...Google...Neil...Skating with the stars...yeesh!)

Hot cools to being warm, and if you have never had a warm cup of coffee versus a hot cup of coffee, it is akin to drinking a warm and flat beer - ewww. You can always rewarm the coffee, but you know that it isn't fresh and you can stick the flat beer in the freezer for a bit, and yeah, you will still get the same effects of the beer that you would if it were still fuzzy and bubbly, but it just won't be the same.

This, too, can be said of people whose lives and livelihoods and most of all, who they are, whether they realize it or not, have been basically handed to them. It could be because they are incredibly good looking, but good looking does not mean that they are also going to be smart, or because they are smart, in which case, they can fix their facial faux pas - regardless of how they got where they are now, eventually they will end up no longer being there, and because the ego is such a...a...pain in the ass and more akin to a princess, it will demand that whoever has gone from hot to lukewarm continue to seek out another way to become hot again.

And there is no microwave to do that, at least not in this life.

The Bigger Picture

Think a few years ahead if you will, and think about what this person who was handed a book deal completely based on her temporary fame, and think about where we might see her in that time. Nothing that we see on TV is real, not even reality shows, and there is no guarantee that what we are handed right now is the end of the search for meaning in our lives. It isn't - not now, not later, but instead, it is ongoing, the search. And I promise you that once you think you have found the meaning of your life, you will again find out that not only was your thinking that you found the meaning of life in error, you will also find out that there are no concrete answers. You will find out that the answers that you discover are temporary and apply only to the here and the now.

The Bigger Picture is a work in progress. The Bigger Picture is incomplete until we can realize that it is never done, that it is a fruitless chase of ideals that are not concrete.

The Ego is a sticky little booger

We all have one, an ego, and it is what a lot of people refer to as our "game face." The ego is that little piece of who we are that tells us that people are going to judge us, that they are going to size us up, look down on us and try to make us basically feel like we have to explain who we are, and we don't ever have to explain who we are. But, our ego is that thing that makes us do things that we do so that we can outdo, impress or in some way try hard to affect the way that said person feels, not only about us, but even about their own selves.

Our ego wants us to feel superior to everyone else in our lives, and our ego does not give a rat's ass about how it makes anyone else feel. Our ego only cares that it gets fed, gets coddled and stroked, and it only serves to make sure that we are shielded from the truth. We know the truth of who we are, what we are and what both of those things really mean and really do. We have all seen the elder man who is dressed like that other moron on that show - you know who he is...he is in his late 30's to late 40's, dressed in clothes that are more appropriate for my 16 year old son than for someone old enough to be his father. We have all seen the woman in her 40s, wearing a micro-mini, all her business hangin' out all over the place, wearing way too much make up, having spent way too much time at the tanning salon, the hair salon, the nail salon and of course, the night clubs, who is also hanging all over some good looking young man who is young enough to hang with her son who she refers to as her "roommate."

Think about these two examples, and then ask yourself what it is that your Ego has told you is ok. This is not to say that the ego is always a bad thing because it is not. The ego is like a black light in a forensic investigation - it illuminates with dark light what it is that is not apparent to the naked eye, and in this case the ego illuminates what we choose to hide from the light, not only so that no one else can see what it is that we are ashamed of, but also so that we do not have to look at it for whatever it is in reality. The ego is that thing , that piece of us that makes us go out into the world professing that we are the greatest and that no matter who says what, that is the truth.

BUT...

That truth and the truth that hurts like a bitch is the thing that the ego is trying to hide. The ego's whole ballgame is to ensure that it gets fed so that it continues to live whether we want it to or realize that it is there or not. We are not who we show the world we are IF who we show the world that we are way cooler than anyone else and we are compelled to tell people this about it. (In other words, as my gorgeous friend Kim says - "If you have to tell people that you are cute, then you're not. Same thing for everything else that we have to tell people we are that is way cooler than what we believe we are but what we keep telling ourselves that we are ...)

The ego is a funny little creep. It steps in when we want to be stroked, when we want to be seen and heard and known, and the ego is very good at making a scene, good or bad.

It is nothing to be an egotistical moron, namely when you are being told who you are by millions of strangers, but it is a hard time to try hard to be someone who we do not even really know...our own damned selves...

...Roxanne...

The Welcome Wagon...welcome! Welcome!

I love being nice and loving, love being called "Reverend," but sometimes, a girl just has to let her hair down, show her teeth and bare her claws...

Don't get me wrong - I love writing "The Luminous Heart" but sometimes I need to be the me that is in real life. If you know me, see me, have been around me, you know that everything I write in my other beloved blog is totally me. However...

All this time I have been denying a part of my Self that is just begging, pleading and promising horrible things if I do not let it out to at least play a bit...

In all the madness that is now life for many of us (you know...the lack of a job thing, the "the car's running like shit" thing, the "oh shit, I forgot to pay that bill" thing, the life thing...) we have evolved into proper people with proper manners and properly placed attitudes, and make no mistake, we are all way more patient and loving and all that good bullshit, but the fact remains that we each have a shadow side and unless we allow the shadow side of us to have a say so in the daily doings of our lives, we can guarantee that eventually, that shadow side is going to come out and play, all on its own, and my shadow side (I call her Loretta) likes to do things that are not that nice, likes to wear things that are more appropriate for the starring role in a girl-girl Vivid Video Production, drinks and swears better, more and louder than any seasoned sailor can claim to having ability to, and yup, she will steal your man, turn him into something more akin to what the cat dragged in, send him on his way crying like a little girl while muttering things that sound like promises to not ever objectify women, ever, ever again.

Hey man, I was told that I have to behave, but no one told my shadow that part

I would sit here and continue with the niceties, but over the years that have passed and in the time that the now not-as-busy-as-it-once-was-but-very-beloved-still maliciousbitch.com, the not so distantly remembered blog that started it all for me (which is now a book that needs badly to be revised...) The Observations of a Demented Housewife, a year or three on Facebook, and the idea that those who know me in real life also know that I can be a bit of a snarky bitch, then you already know that though The Luminous Heart is a wonderful thing to write and to read, I gotta be me.

If you know me then you know that I am not a rabid feminist but that I don't tolerate the shit that a lot of people - women included, if you can believe that - seem to think is ok to post anywhere about women. (DO NOT objectify me, objectify my global sisters and whatever you do, do NOT NOT NOT bother to be creepy with my daughter. I am not the one you have to worry about in that case- let's just say that I have taught her very well.) If you know me, then already you know that I am not one to not live from the part of my Self that is fearless (even though I harbor some very real fears...and yes, that includes spiders- I HATE spiders) , not one who will NOT question that which deserves to be questioned, and totally not one who does not at least try to live with the entire planet and all her occupants in mind, because each little thing we do, say, think impacts everyone who we share the air with.

Whiskey and spiked collars

If The Luminous Heart is all about the heart and soul, then this blog is totally about the shadow side of that same heart and soul. This one is about that part of us that wants to go out into the world, saving horses whilst riding cowboys, stay up all night in a dank and dark corner of a dank and dark casino in the dankest, darkest, seediest part of Las Vegas, sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels with a bunch of strangers who are more willing to slit someone's throat than they are to just smile, wave and walk away from someone who cheated at the blackjack table.

However, The Vodka Chronicles is another side of the heart, the soul, and from time to time, the ego as well. For it is that what we call our pride is actually our ego, and when that ego rears its head, that is when we see the shadow in us at work...

Roxanne...