Turmoil- The Start of a New Day; Chapter Three; waxing gibbous Harvest Moon

Turmoil...

in the streets and in our hearts. So much useless suffering...

OH! OH! I am so tired of being defensive and guarded.  (The shields won't take it Captain!)

About four weeks ago, I decided to start smiling. I started saying "good morning" to people and smiling at them when our paths would cross at door thresholds and such.  The result was that I was feeling more content and confident with each encounter.  I liked bringing them a small amount of recognition of their humanity. I even enjoyed when it caught some completely off guard and they would suspiciously scowl.  I loved the ones who thanked me.  I truly adored the people who smiled back.  

This idea came from my Buddhist who told me a story about how he chooses to consciously practice Loving Kindness Meditation while in the line at Starbucks.  He acknowledges each person in the store and soundlessly offers them the simple lines of the meditation.

May you be happy.

May you be free from pain and fear.

May you walk at ease in this life.

The Buddhist said that he could choose to lose himself in his phone as everyone else is... 

OR he could spread something immeasurable but valuable for others and mostly, himself. He spoke of how it was one of the high points of his day.  He felt joyful.

I think I saw him very differently at that moment.  He can be a complete a-hole at times, but he is consciously striving to be someone better.  AND that alone, could change the world...

So please, smile at me and I will smile back.  

It isn't a proclamation of my complete happiness...

It is simply me acknowledging the beauty in you.  

Being the Part, Chapter Two: The New Harvest Moon

So, I want to be a Hippie Goddess, earth connected and beautiful, 
LOVE oozing from every pore...
I Got the look (reference Chapter One)
Now what?

It is so very easy to be grounded and serene when I am in nature; so much less easy moving about my typical day in suburbia.   

What is it about being around strangers- human strangers- that trips our circuits and turn us into deaf and blind auto-trons?  (Scotty, get those shields UP now!)

For me, it is insecurity that I don't measure up. Not cool enough. Not thin enough. Not pretty enough. Not smart enough. Not successful. Not talented. Not the so many words that were uttered to me by insensitive family, friends, strangers or more than likely, just invented on my own.

Isn't it so uselessly cruel that everyone is wandering around in such doubt about their worth?  The less self aware take verbal stabs at others to bolster their perceived inadequacy while the rest of us remain unemotional and guarded. We are all in such turmoil.  Don't make eye contact...

And Yes! even him...that dude over there with the Armani suit and Rolex.  Maybe him even more as he is bolstering himself with his fancy possessions...

Wait, I do that too...Let's not forget Chapter One...feather earrings...

So, Yes, I am in turmoil too...
In the line at Starbucks...
In the food store...
At the small deli I love...
While I type this...

Looking the Part, Chapter One

Route 16 south is moving slow and I'm both anxious and wary of the start of my seven hour drive home. The traffic inches along this main street as I revisit my latest purchase, a large, antique Kali figurine.  I own that mix of thrill and dread; thrill that I will have her in my home to use in my spiritual work, dread at the credit card bill that will need to be defended to my Buddhist spouse.  

I take in a breath as my eyes watch the pedestrians swarm this tourist village. Color and textures flock by. Shorts, skirts, sundresses, jeans, a bathing suit with a sarong, and a business suit pass with their various owners. Long hair, short hair and pink hair.  Flip flops, cowboy boots, high heels.  

I look down at my own capris, dusty from the waterfall hike. I wish I had on the patchwork maxi skirt that I had packed.  I take a quick look in the rear view mirror (ah vanity!) and smile at the necklace I had decided needed a good home on a different trip. I'm truly an easy mark for well made unique sterling jewelry, but this pendant had an additional appeal- it housed a spiral seashell. A spiral seashell!  How fitting for an earth goddess...

I turn away and then audibly sigh at seeing the capris again.  I will definitely change at the next rest area...

And then I am struck by a thought...

Do I really define myself so simply that a skirt and a pendant can make me whole?  

Does looking like a hippie goddess girl result in me being spiritual?

I know the answer is no, but damned if I don't stop at that sweet Native American shoppe and buy those silver feather earrings.

After all, a girl needs to look the part, doesn't she?

A waterfall, a boy and me: Waning Scheherazade Moon

The little boy won't stop screaming to his mother for her to look at him. He is twenty five feet above his mother on a rock ledge strewn with fast moving water. How he got there I cannot reason as I had tried to move higher on this same rock face before finally accepting the rock where my ample ass now rests.  The mother waves and pictures are snapped. One of so many taken here.  Will it be blurry or overexposed? Perhaps the focus will be perfect but the whole scale lost in the lens.  Maybe a month from now the camera will sit in a case, in a closet, the whole sum of her son's accomplishment lost in data.

Yet, no.  The accomplishment occurred.  The boy rejoiced.

Recorded or not, reality happens.  Are we  present to experience it?  Or are we wondering how it will look on Facebook.

The boy rejoiced.

Scheherazadress!! A new identity for a new moon, so long overdue...

I've been remiss.  I've been in my own head. I've been fretting. I've been unsure. 

The moon has been cycling, waxing to waning or vice versa depending on the date and I've been in clouds...
figuratively and literally.  The moon has been very shy in my neck of the woods. It is partly the angle of rotation, partly the weather, partly the time of rise and set. Basically, the moon has been missing from my life for a few months. Or more accurate, I have been missing from the moon.

The new moon was on the 26th. The Sturgeon Moon they call this one. Hardly, a romantic name.  Fish Moon. "Hey Honeydoo, let's cuddle by the light of the big ol' Fish Moon...Pucker up..."  ewwww.

No one has written songs about this moon as they have about the Blue Moon and Harvest Moon...

"Feeesssheeee Moooooon. Oh wonderful Feeessheeee Moooooon. Beautiful Sturgeon of Lakes so Deeeeeeep".   ewwwww. Again. ewwwww.

No choice but to rename it!!!  
I dub thee the Scheherazade Moon.

Let me explain...

Four years ago, when asked what I did for a living I would answer with an unsure "Artist?"  I never quite felt the title was mine and I wasn't even sure what I meant.  I do ART.  I DO art. What does that even mean?  The majority of the public does Art every now and again.  Why is that my definition?  I would love to use the term "Creationist" as I love to create and bring creativity to every endeavor I undertake; however, that term has political and religious implications that are so NOT me.

On a different social media platform, I coined the use of the term "to scheherazade" as to embody the creation of something wonderful from basically nothing. It was a reference to the mythical princess Scheherazade, who spun colorful tales nightly to beguile her husband, the King, who was bent on beheading every wife the next morning. She made fantasy become real. She made something out of nothing.  She spun her tales for one thousand and one nights until the King was very much in love with her. "To Scheherazade" is to make something wonderful and whole out of nothing.  It is to create with the intention of bringing joy. 

So, next time I'm asked about what I do for a living...

"I am a scheherazadress!!"

...and I'll be doing it by the light of the Scheherazade Moon