All Dried Up and Nowhere to Go

i.

Seriously though. This week after working 50 hours for two weeks straight I feel like all the creative juice that was previously flowing through my veins has dried up and backed up into the pathways of my brain leaving me well….creatively constipated.

Except that what is stuck there is not shit. And eating prunes is not going to solve this problem. So how, my question is how to reconnect with the flow? Or more importantly, how to always be in the flow even if your life is threatening to dry you up?

Seriously though. I haven’t touched my guitar in 2 weeks and all I feel about it is guilt and pressure. Now “the foundation” is having concerns about “my ability to complete my project.” AKA “The clock is now ticking on yo’ money so you better make something happen with yo’ record plans and soon!” Well, you know what? I’m having doubts too. I’m tired. I’m spent and I’m running a marathon that just keeps getting longer. Can you imagine being 5 feet away from the finish line of a crucial race and then watching the line be pushed out another 26 miles? Can you imagine that this has been going on for 3 years? You’d be pretty damn tired too.

I mean if an artist can honestly and completely be dedicated to her art year after year until she comes to a point where everything is at an impossible crossroads suspended between passion, debt, responsibility, talent, Saturn, insanity and dreams… If she is standing on her own in this, and always has been, like some lone guitar ranger singing her heart out with a vengeance with nothing beneath her but the sky and no map before her but her own hands… If she should come to a time in her life when she can’t decide what matters and all she can manage to do is eat, sleep, work, pay the bills, and try not to be afraid of what she is becoming…If she can see the new lines in her face… If she knows in her heart that her talent is a precious thing and is now seeing herself as a struggling and ill-equipped custodian of such talent… What, pray tell, is such an artist to do?

I need a revolution! Where is my knight in fucking shining armor? Where is someone who can save me?

Oh yes. I have decided to save my life. But I was hoping that life would wait for saving.

ii.

The other day after working for 10 hours with my nose pressed up against a computer screen, my shoulders hunched up against my ears and my wrists clicking in time with each strike of the keyboard…

After riding home in a sticky BART train for an hour, where some guy with a grocery bag full of oblong vegetables actually poked me in the bum with his assorted cucumbers, or whatever, and didn’t even notice…

After all of this… I came home feeling completely mechanical. I plopped down on the couch where I stopped long enough to realize that I was holding my breath and probably had been for most of the day. I looked outside at the garden growing darker by the minute as the last ray of sun hopped over the fence and into the neighbor’s back yard. And I thought, “I think I might actually already be dead, because this can’t really be living.”

What the hell kind of a thought is that?!

And do you know what I’m doing now? Now I am sitting in my car, watching people. Somehow I don’t feel so alone when I’m sitting in my car. I feel like I’m going somewhere or doing something or as if I have some direction. I watch the people park their cars and get out to walk their over-heated dogs. I watch the people kiss and hold hands on the sidewalk. I watch the people pack their bags of groceries in their trunks, and I wonder what they will make for dinner. This makes me feel better.

I’m feeling dry and dusty, and there is nowhere to go. So, I am sitting in my car and writing this to you.

Corporate Sweatshop? A word from the underground.

Sundays are kind of sad. Over the weekend, I get a glimpse into what it would be like to have a significant amount of time to do the things that are important to me, and just as I begin to feel inspired it’s over. Monday comes and I’m up at 5:30am to be bussed off to the corporate sweatshop.

The buildings are tall and the computer screens hum quietly, inconspicuously zapping years of my life away. I sit for hours on end worrying here and there about mid-weight obesity and sedentary lifestyle. I am lucky, I have only one other person in my cubicle, and we get along. The others are crammed like sardines in hot rooms, hunched over their keyboards dreaming of health care coverage and paid time off, when no one is watching. But of course, someone is always listening or watching so, we've learned to shove entire dreams into the time span of a single blink, or to forget dreaming all together. If we keep our eyes closed for a couple minutes too long chances are some of us will be gone by the time we open them. Fired or laid off because of real or fabricated events, lack of communication, disconnect, disorganization. Disposable.

I have a lot of nerve writing this; hopefully I won't become one of the “disappeared.” We are on edge. We are long term temporary employees, minding our p's q's and F yous, hoping that one day we'll actually get hired and be recognized for the hard work we do and are (or not) passionate about. We are actually the blood line of this department, the foundation and literally so since most of us are housed on the first floor due to some legal technicality. Interestingly enough, when you walk around on the 1st floor you see mostly and disproportionately faces of color. "Diversity candidates," brought in through a special interview process to work on contract, often subject to "special" treatment by regular permanent employees. (That latter of course, we only find out during the 1st month when the all but hazing begins. Or maybe you're lucky and someone spoke out before you and it actually got nipped in the bud.)

And we all say, thank god for any job in this economy, after all, we do get paid pretty well. But, really? Any job? Under any conditions? I don't know.

And what about God?

How the hell am I supposed to save my life when I spend 30% of it at some annoying job? And this job, which is annoying, is somehow supposed to bring me closer to the life that I want: a life of playing music, teaching yoga, creating and writing. This backwards equation exists because I’ve gotta have some money to exist in the meantime. Right now, the mean time seems a really long time.

Why do I need money anyway? Why do I need shelter? Why do I need to eat and sleep? Why do I need a hug? Why do I have to pee and poop? Why do I need love? Why do I feel? Why do I have these emotions? Why do I have to wear clothes? Why do I have ambition? All of this is so annoying, don’t you think? If I didn’t need all of these things I could just exist and all would be bliss. I would play music, sing, teach yoga, and write all day long. In fact I would even BE the music that I want to play. This would be enough to make me happy.

And the Spirit said to the Body: “Why do I need you? You need and want all the time. You feel happy, then later you feel sad. You are a burden and I want to be free.”

And the Body said to the Spirit: “Have you have forgotten that you manifested me? You manifested me so that you could see. So that you could touch. So that you could hear and know, feel and love. Laugh, hurt, fight and pray. You manifested me so that you could learn what you need to learn so that you won’t ever need me again. When I ache, you learn. When I want, you learn. When I love, fight, and feel sad, you learn. When you sing. You hear…because of me.

In fact, you are bound by me and this could be our heaven if we remember that you created all of this in order to learn.”

Spirit: “Body, this is hell. You ache, you bleed. You feel happy, then you feel sad. You envy and want. You are excellent and mediocre. I don’t understand anymore why we agreed to do this. I soar at the speed of light. I am unlimited intelligence and power. I am never boring or mediocre. I am omnipresent and I see every thing that is coming and I know everything that has passed. Body, you rarely even remember your own history. You cycle through the same joys, pains and misguided deeds again and again, and when you catch a glimpse of light and insight it is only for a moment. And what for?

Body, you try to attain things that you don’t understand. Love, abundance, happiness, health, security. I am Spirit and I am all of these things. You have bound me and I want to be free.”

Body: “Spirit, be patient. The only way for you to be free is for me to die. I am not yet dead because we made an agreement to learn and we are not done learning. We are only in hell when this is forgotten.”

Spirit: “And what about the mind? What is its purpose?”

Body: “The mind resides in the body. It is the portal through which you can see, learn, and observe all that I’m trying to tell you. Through the mind you can know, see and remember that we are in fact Spirit, we are not this body and we are not this mind. We are consciousness observing life and we are actually already free.”

Readers: “Whoa dude.”

Spirit: “Why do I forget?”

Body: "You forget because we are human, and there is much confusion in the human world. This confusion is your hell. Heaven exists in the remembrance and practice that Spirit is all there is. And above all remember that heaven is not better than hell. They are equal. Two ends of the same stick. Sit. Close your eyes and do nothing, or pray and you will remember. The longer you sit, the longer you will remember, and when you remember always, you will no longer need the burden of this body. You will have heaven and you will see that it is equal to hell. Then you will stop trying, and simply exist."

Spirit: “Can’t I exist without you?”

Body: “You can, and you always have, but who would know?”

Spirit: “And what about God?

Body: “Amen.”

To Bathe or Not to Bathe? That is the question.

It has been brought to my attention that there is a class of people, mainly women, who refuse to shower at the gym.

Now, after one of the most awkward and outrageous moments in my life, during which I came out of the shower at the gym, and an old Asian lady said to me, “You know, I’m a lady, but when I see you I want to make a sex,” I think the topic warrants some discussion.

To bathe or not to bathe? That is the question. When confronted with a question such as this, there are many factors to consider:

1) Do you produce girly sweat or manly sweat? (These are technical fitness terms if you didn’t know.) Now, if you’re like me and you produce manly sweat, I mean, if when you’re done with your work out you actually look like someone dunked you in a pool of salt water and then shook you, then you probably don’t want to sit your sweaty behind in the car, unless you’re one of those weird people who carries around large plastic bags for such occasions. Manly sweat = shower at the gym.

2) Are you afraid of public nudity? If the answer is yes, then go home because you’re going to see a whole lot of things that you don’t want to see. There may be a few things you do want to see, but that’s just wrong, so go home.

3) If you get cruised by an old lady, are you the type to laugh? Or are you the type to shrink and die? If you know who you are, you’ll know what to do.

Now if you happen to be a gay man the implications, as usual, are totally different. I have a friend at work who is a gay, and he told me that taking a shower at the gym is actually a way for a gay man to pick up a date! Now I know this sounds wrong and controversial, but he told me so!

So, as you can see here in the thesis I have so nicely laid out, when deciding whether or not to shower at the gym, you must consider this: do you want go home sweaty and possibly ruin your car seats, but avoid public nudity and the mixed bag that comes along with it? Or do you want to go home fresh and clean and just try to forget the old lady who walked in on you when you were scrubbing your….toes. (That one happened today.)

Um…if you’re a gay then…just go for it!

Readers: "A gay?" Are you serious?

Akosua Miracle: Yes dude, my best friend is a gay.

Last Night I Dreamt

Last night I dreamt I was falling in love. It was such a beautiful dream and much better than the one I had the night before, during which I actually fell in the mud. Maybe there is some connection.

No this time, there was a man. I’m quite sure he was Middle Eastern, or maybe he was South East Asian. We were sitting on an army green couch in an empty room with ivory walls. Just him and I. I was perched by his side trying to map the contour of his face with my hands. Each finger engaged in the excavation of joy. Trying to find the Allah there in each crevice or maybe even a forgotten OM. Trying to find all of the places where he had been, and love each one.

His arm circled around my waist as if to brace me for the unavoidable breaking point of anything this good. Some say that this is not necessarily so, this breaking point, but all I have is experience and even my dreams know this.

There on the couch in a strangely empty room, I burrowed into him like a bird in a nest trying to find a position perfect enough to protect her egg. He liked the way I burrowed and he showed me is straight white teeth. He smelled extraordinary, like soil and cinnamon and rain at once. His eyes opened like golden pools when he looked at me, and they were covered by a dark veil of lashes when he looked away. The shape of his lips, the weight of his hands on my body as I perched there now in his lap looking into his face, was pure grace. He made me feel smaller somehow, compared to the broadness of his shoulders and I liked this. I felt safe. I felt protected. I felt loved. And he did love me. He held me like a precious jewel. There was no doubt.

I’m not sure what it was that ripped me out of this dream. I gladly would have lived there forever. But I broke into reality. Sleep shattered and the shards flew into my chest. I held my breath hoping that I could stop this. And I gasped when the inevitable set in. There I was in my musty little basement apartment. Alone. The feeling familiar but unwanted. Good f’n morning.