Peace and quiet

[thoreau]

This morning I was up at 4am. I am prone to nightmares (particularly ones set aboard ship in the navy - I was a submariner and you can imagine how it all goes). I woke up in such distress that Miss Kate woke up and came over and snuggled in real close - and licked my chin for a few minutes. I got up and started the coffee maker - then headed for the shower. I know better than to try and go back to sleep after one of these fun-filled episodes. Out of the shower, I skimmed email - fed Miss Kate and drank a cup of coffee. I pulled the shades back and stood on my balcony for a while sipping and watching the city wake up.

One of my biggest concerns when I moved back to a city was that I'd never find the peace and quiet that living in the country (Boise, ID from 1999 to 2006) had afforded me. My favorite times were up in the foothills with Miss Kate on early mornings - where the only other creature up that early was a red fox or a beautiful blue heron scanning the Boise River for breakfast. It's really a shame that Boise is such a political/social wasteland (for gay people at least) - or I'd still be there.

The mantra I've used over the last year has been a Rumi quote, "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." It has been very helpful to end each day as I meditate with that mantra. It is easy to apply that to the obvious things but it has been a goal to find ways to apply that 'way of thinking' across the board. I came to the hard conclusion after my first year or so in San Francisco that I had lost touch with being myself; I was trying so hard to find love - - and when I say that I mean all sorts of things I love. Job, Friends, Community, Theatre, Romance, Inclusion, Success. It really is a quantum shift in thinking when you approach challenges not as (whiny voice) why can't I get that? why I can't I have a great boyfriend? I want to be happy damnit! (end whiny voice).... wow - that is soooooo not attractive. I had friend questioning my path and it finally hit me that I was going about this transition all wrong.

Let me backtrack a tiny bit. ..... I left Idaho after also ending a complicated codependent relationship of ten years. I wanted reinvention - I wanted Life 2.0 - - I wanted the success and passion and sex and life that I'd sat in Boise daydreaming about for a decade. I wanted it so desperately that I jumped off the cliff without a parachute. and when I hit the ground it hurt a lot more than it looks like it does in a wiley coyote roadrunner cartoon. It hurt bad.

So - while researching novel #2 (churning away quite successfully off LJ btw) - - - - I found the Rumi qoute. and every night before I go to bed - I've meditated on finding the barriers I'd set in the way of the life I wanted; find the barriers within me that kept me from simplifying and getting to the root of it all. Do I feel I've reached that? hardly. but.... almost a year to the day after starting that meditation and that 'redirection' of my energy - things started happening.

I met Dave, I got the role at New Conservatory last fall, I am singing with the men's chorus, I am doing some of the best creative work of my life and my cooking show is really taking off. All of this with the undercurrent of having finally found peace and quiet amongst the density and crazyness of living in San Francisco. Dave and I celebrate our first year together this weekend (with a "day of beauty" on Saturday, dinner with the fine food group on Sunday - and a Tuesday off to take a behind the scenes tour of the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park).

I know this is a rambling post - and a bit self indulgent. It is with great satisfaction that I can say I'm happy in ways that have eluded me for most of my adult life. I am happy with my body - I am happy with my heart, being in love with a remarkable man whom I can't stop trying to corner and make love to - I am confident in my career and I have found creative pursuits that help me pump out my extra energies. I am glad that my friends have stuck by me through this transition - and are here to see me at my full stride making my path happen for myself. There are still obstacles in my way - and it'll just take time to figure out what I can do to allow me to pass through them as well.