I should be in bed ... and the law of attraction.

 No wait - I am in bed , should be asleep. The middle of the night's my favorite time - favorite time to be up "righting" . That's the kind of writing I do to get right with myself again. To slip back into soulfulness and alignment. But sometimes, I know it's going to kill me the next day, I hate - having to get up in the morning, or any particular time - if I could have no boundaries ever - at least those that are defined by clocks... aaah my world would be a perfect place. 

 Abraham says - all I ever have to do is get into the vortex... been trying not to write about Abraham Hicks, and the law of attraction... but it's that randomly late time of night when the censors gone to sleep in my brain, but I'm still up.

 And all I have to do to be in the vortex is feel good. Answer to everything. Period. I love that. I love it so much I want it to be true. All I have to do is feel good. So I don't have to - solve a single other problem. It's so radical...it's sooo radical that most people, myself included will reject it. In the too good to be true basket... thing is when I practice it - it feels great!! It's the only philosophy I've come up against that consistently feels good. It set's me free from everything. I don't have to get enough sleep YAY. I don't have to do the right thing. YAY. I don't have to be miss perfect model of the perfect response.. I just have to find a way to feel good. Or feel a little better. That's alignment.

 It's so simple, so easy, and everyday I find a million ways of forgetting it. I blame, I worry , I put myself down... then I remember, all I have to do is feel good. I feel the anxiety creeping back, the problems looming larger...then I remember - just feel good. anxiety, fear.. then feel good. (Or just a little better if you can't get all the way to good). What feels good right now? What feels loving to self??? Beating myself about about past mistakes? - No - worrying about the future? - No - trying to work out stuff that is overwhelming me - NO - but letting go of all that feels great.  This philosophy goes against everything I've been taught. (WORRY!! ACT!! FRET!! REGRET!!) But now - just - let...go!. Just love self unconditionally.

 All I have to do right now is feel good. I don't have to work out how to deal with Niks other women if I go further in his direction, or how i'm going to pay the rent for the house I haven't even moved into yet.... Oh no - all I have to do is feel good lol.  I don't have to solve anything right now except how to feel good - now. On that note - Good Night. I can't even apologise for how many people won't like this post, cause it feels good to ME, and right now that's all that counts. :-)

Nik

 The sun's shining, it's a beautiful day...and I'd feel great about it if I hadn't got to bed at 4am, and been up again at 8. So am going back to bed as soon as I've finished collecting a few thoughts together and writing them down. It's kinda exciting catching random thoughts. I like to be surprised by what's there lurking around in the waters of unconsciousness... "Stream" of consciousness writing allows pretty much anything to surface. Sounds more and more like fishin, and it IS a lot like like fishing. I'm tired now, not in the best place to catch that Marlin of thought that will wrestle with me to the core of my being for hours in a single minded, focused passionate way. Today is more like a day for piddling around at the duck pond, catching little random thoughts, and most of them will be too small to keep and end up getting thrown back

 I'm thinking about Nik, but not really wanting to. Nik is the person I want to think about only as someone else's challenge, but I didn't want him to be mine! Nik loves women.. if not all women, he's certainly capable of loving a huge variety of women, and he DOES. He has five or more women on the go at any one time. Damn it, I kinda enjoyed talking with him. No - I really enjoyed our explorations of thought...and that's rare these days for me. I woke up feeling a bit aroused and I'd done really well at staying out of that place with him. I really don't want to be part of his entourage though, & I can feel the pull.

 I went to the large crumbling villa that he shares with a random & ever changing flow of people. My beautiful African friend who I'll call Z , has just arrived there and is staying in the bicycle room. I want to get to know him better, & that was my intention when I went round there last night. I wasn't expecting, planning or even thinking of sharing a massage and then a cuddle , and some real converstaion, with Nik. I didn't stay the night, so we didn't sleep together in any sense of the word. But Nik opened a few doors and windows to my soul a little, and it was good. I was, and still am a bit surprised by that. So I'm going to sleep on it now. When I woke earlier, I could feel his spirit flowing around me, and the arousal that went with it.. his spirit was seeking me out, and it found me in that half awakened dream space .... which is where I want to be now, not half awake, but fully immersed in sleep.

A Day Gone West

Spent the whole day waiting for stuff to happen... which didn't happen. My son slept on the couch all day while I filled in time doing other stuff... while I waited for other people to finish doing their stuff... so we could do stuff together. I waited to give a violin lesson to the 10yr old over the road, at 3:30, then 4:30, then 6pm, then not at all. I thought to myself it would be nice to get paid anyway for all that waiting, and not long after that thought I received a text, "I'll put the money in the letter box for you, we wasted your whole day. They didnt waste my whole day. It took Kris to finish it off..
 I just texted him. He'd invited me to the beach with a group of friends for an evening picnic.

"thanks for inviting me to the beach today. If I hadn't walked to the fruit shop to get stuff to make fruit salad, I wouldn't have found the violin for sale at the 2nd hand shop on the way. It has a good bow and a great old case (2 things I really wanted, the bow I use now is stuck together with sellotape). All 4 way cheap $65. Plus I feel great after eating a huge bowl of fruit salad. I guess you don't like fruit salad, maybe if I'd made nachos you may have picked me up like you said you were going to?? Anyway is nice at home, soo quiet & peaceful".

It's actually just my way of saying "you're a dick" without actually saying it at all. 

I imagine him feeling really screwed up after that text lol. Which is probably just deluded of me but it feels good when someones expecting to be attacked for being a dick, to just confuse them a little bit.
Kris watched his mum die of a heroin overdose when he was 10 years old. Partly because of that I cut him a little slack. I skirt around calling him a dick...I really did want to go to the beach. I can feel the warm balmy breeze, the cool water, I can see the twisted trunks of the pohutukawa trees, hear the waves lapping gently on the shore...

My son woke up awhile ago, did the "you're the reason my life is a mess conversation" . Somehow pulled him into a better place (mostly by feeding him fruit salad and steak).

 And - it really is - nice just chilling at home, on my own, can't remember when I last did this? the first time this year.

 And - the clothesline is full of clean clothes blowing in the wind to remind me that something happened today - a lot of washing got done...

Sadness revisited...

 I still, miss everything about you. Nothing can replace you, nothing can fill the space you left....My life will never be the same without you. It's not that I wont experience love or joy again, but I won't experience the love and joy WE shared together. I won't touch you again. I won't ..... For a moment I go deep into the sadness, I feel like I'm breaking in two - then it passes, gone as quickly as it came. I know it will come again. The only way I can heal the loss, is to feel the loss. I never know when it's coming, that intense heartbreaking pain...Do you ache like I do??

 It's times like these that I desperately, achingly, need art. This place, this "reality" I find myself in is so cold and sterile, I need to soften the edges. Maybe lose this world altogether for a while. Sometimes when there's a sickness of the heart, art is the only cure. I know that if...if I share my life with a man again, I have to be able to speak "art" with him... art and heart are so close together for me. I have to be able to speak magic and poetry and all those things that don't make sense. I have to be able to lose "this" world.... Just shake it loose for a while, or forever....

 This world is painful for me, this world of straight edges, sharp lines, parking tickets and politics. I have to have an escape route when the thought police are after me, and that best route to freedom is the creative one. How could I ever have thought the path to freedom was through money??? Through bricks and mortor.... when art was there all the time showing me the way...

  I couldn't handle going all the way down to homelessness....to living on the street with my art.... so I gave up my dog. The one that I love more than just about anything, just about any one, but not more than my need to have shelter and security. I could have gone all the way to the street for my love for my dog, but I couldn't go that far. The street means no privacy, no walls. Being exposed to the public everyday. I could have done my art on the street with my dog next to me, but I couldn't go that far.

 I went as far as living in my car, with a mattress in the back. For over two years.... We camped by parks, beaches, and reserves. I sat on a rocks at the beach, and under trees, sat by rivers and lakes playing my violin, while you chased seagulls and made friends with other dogs.  I had you, and I had shelter, a small world I could control...but slowly my car rusted, and slowly my walls collapsed. I couldn't afford the car repairs, my registration and warrant, became out of date, my car became illegal..I clocked up fines for then, and then finally it died. Outside my friends house, but parked illegally on the street.

 In down times I berate myself for being so stupid as to get in this position? How could my love for my son, then a man, and finally a dog, drive me so far from the home I once had? And why?? No one appreciates me for allowing the slow erosion of all that held me together, in their name, at least not the man, and not my son. The only place any of this makes any sense is in the realisation that deep pain, deep loss, deep challenging of all that holds identity into a form, is the birthing place of great art. And the loss of something, 'someone', in this case a dog.. that I love so so deeply and unconditionally, takes me to the place where I can no longer live in this world, without creating, or attempting to create, great love and great beauty.

 Someone, perhaps the policeman when I try to justify my unpaid fines, is going to say I'm crazy when I say, I can't make this world make sense anymore. I can understand art, I can understand the heart, that's all..

 And I have to say that - I need to be what all this pain and confusion has created. I feel closer to my soul than ever. Aligned to my true self. I feel truer, freer, more real than I have since I was a child. I feel closer to knowing what is real and what is important. I feel less divorced from the truth in this place. And I know that because of this people, may say I'm crazy. Because I can only do art from a place that is coming from deep within my soul. Not for a career path, not for the dollars. I believe the dollars will come. But art has to be for the purpose of evoking joy, or allowing release of pain..for the purpose of transformation, for sharing, for inspiration, for healing... - NOT .... not for money.

 Paint what deeply moves you, paint what gives you joy, paint and allow the tears to flow, paint sorrow, paint love.... paint for the joy of colour, to express, to share... or paint simply, paint a feeling, paint a single flower with love...paint like a child, forget all the rules, make up a few of your own. Paint , not for the dollars, (they will come, in their own time if they want to) but to move, first of all yourself to a better place, then maybe someone else will come for the ride.

Paint magic, worship magic(not money)... trust (the money will come, but let it go for now - just paint, or write, or play music...). No one will believe me, but this is only for me, I can't take anyone else on this journey. How can I say to anyone to follow my path, when for me it's taken me all the way to staring homelessness in the face, and sacrificing the one I love the most to avoid that?

 I say not for money, but what I mean is - only paint from being aligned with the soul. If you can paint from there, and stay focused on there no matter what, then money or the thought of it and focus on it, cannot interfere, so always paint from there. Remember, you are the judge. Your work may be crap to anyone else, but if it lifts your spirits to a higher place, if it feels good to do it, you're on the right path for YOU. That's what my inner guidance is telling me.

 Somehow my path is not to follow anyone elses drumbeats. Right now - I can't , not even if I want to. I've taken myself so far down this path, that no one can join me where I am, and I can't join them either.
 

Goodbye Sunshine.....

 Last night was my last night with my dog Sunny. We went for a walk in the dark, Sunny running ahead as usual, not really walking. Tears were pouring down my face as my heart broke quietly on the inside.I thought about all the good times we'd had together, so many of them. So many sparkling moments that shine in the dimness of most of my life. I remember how I brought you home the first time as a puppy, how you sat on my lap and cried, and I tried to comfort you and drive at the same time. I snuggled you in my bed under the blankets, and you leapt out excited and so full of life first thing in the morning. You knew never grew out of loving to snuggle up, or the sheer excitement of being alive that made you leap into the air...My cat max, the odd one out, the big fluffy black tom cat, loved you straight away, although you weren't sure about him....you both ran after the ball together. But Mr Sox, a slim black and white cat, didn't want you around, he hid behind a curtain and lashed out at you as you bounded by in typical puppy fashion. He aimed for your eyes, and he found one...ever since then you've been my beautiful one eyed dog. It was snowing that day, we had to wait for the weather to clear, to take you to the vet, and you lay on top of my boyfriend all day and cried. Mr Sox took off, but my other cats, Kokomo and Midnight came to love and trust you over time.Years later we would all go on long walks together, with your best friend a mastiff staffy x called extra.. and sometimes with a couple of the neighbours dogs in tow.

 I have so many memories, so much love and so much joy... I can't write them all just now. I just know I love you from the bottom of my heart. So for it to come to this, to have to voluntarily give you up, my best friend ever??..you kept coming back to me last night, as I walked and you ran ahead..seeing my anguish, looking at me with puzzled eyes and concern on your face....

 When we climbed into bed for the last time, I stroked your body, really feeling it for the last time. And I prayed for you. I dreamt of you running with beautiful, happy dogs of all shapes and sizes. In the morning we got up early and went to the park. You chased the birds on the playing field with the same joy and enthusiasm as ever.....

 You were so brave when I took you to the shelter to be rehomed. Your tail was high as the handler slipped a lead over your head, you were eager to find out more about the dogs you could hear and smell just around the corner. You walked away from me for the last time. But you will forever, ever be in my heart. I feel your spirit so strongly, you are part of my medicine. The pain and the love that force my heart to open up. That sends my spirit searching to the heavens for answers to those seemingly unanswerable questions. You are the most love I've ever known.

If you don't like swearing - Don't read this!!

 
 Aaargh!! What the F**K am I doing??!! Why am I doing this?? Why am I throwing my life away in pursuit of something so intangible? why Don't I get a real job?? Today hasn't gone quite how I'd like, today the mouse couldn't find its way off the wheel....and just went round and round all day... I tried to come back to myself by feeding the birds... there's something about watching happy sparrows and pigeons that makes me feel good - But EVEN THE BIRDS DIDN"T TURN UP!! A little sparrow was chirping on a lamp post, but he sure wasn't telling anyone else about the handfuls of rice I'd thrown on the pavement - I'm looking like an idiot now because there isn't a single bird showing any interest in it. Two pigeons wandered by, pecking at miniscule crumbs as they ignored my offering and kept going in search of something better??? Even the seagull circling above the feast I'd laid below flew off in the opposite direction. If I was trying to not feel like a loser, it wasn't working. I gave up and unpacked my violin, started playing without the inspiration of the sweetness of birds to guide me. There was only a wind blowing my skirt and hair to keep me company, and a distant photographer, I guess the wind blowing my skirt and hair appealed to him too. I kept playing longer than I wanted, just because he was there. When I finished he gave me $2, and smiled blankly at my comment - no english..So with the $7 I made in total, I went and bought a drink and wandered off to Queen St.

 I wandered straight into that African guy whose name I will never remember, let alone be able to pronounce.. The cute one who wasn't home when I turned up today, cause I saw him again yesterday and he invited me for a jam. The window was open, the back door was wide open... the lounge was full of dirty ashtrays full of cigarette butts, and the general squalor of a genuine bachelor pad. As musicians, when they step out in town, they look fresh and washed and stunning at all times, but home is another story. They say you can tell a musicians home, by the lack of toilet paper and light bulbs.. There's always though, a supply of the essentials - drugs, tobacco and alcohol..

 It was lucky I got a ride to his house, since he wasn't home. On an earlier wild goose chase, I was innocently feeling genuinely inspired up on K rd, playing in the wind again, when someone came up to me and told me that my friends band was playing in the domain from 3 - 5, It was 2:54. they weren't playing between 3 & 5, but I didn't know that...so I packed up and headed over grafton bridge towards the domain. I stopped for a while outside the kebab shop near the hospital...weighing up the pro's and cons of a $9.50 kebab on rice over a $2.50 pie. By the time I got to the band rotunda the kebab and rice was cold, partly because I bumped into Mike on the way. My friends Gypsy band had finished playing an hour earlier, someone was rapping instead to some cool acid jazz. Mike noticed me before I noticed him...in fact I wouldn't have noticed him at all if he hadn't leaped out of his flash black car and yelled out my name. I was watching the cricketers on the field down below, I was noticing how many of them looked Indian. Mikes a drummer and a surfer who doesn't drum and doesn't surf. Instead he drives trucks and drinks alone in the domain in his car. He tells me he's always working to pay bills. None of it makes much sense. He works so he can afford drugs. Mike gave me a ride to the African guys house, and when he wasn't there, he dropped me off in town. we sat for a while in his car while he grumbled about the other drivers, and the multitude of people who had ripped him off, freezing his life in an ongoing post traumatic stress disorder, from which it seems he may never recover.  But he's been number one worker at his job 2 years in a row. Work is fine, it's just life he can't handle..

 Anyway the African guy tells me they may want me to play at Raggamuffin with them. He's got my number, and he'll txt me, but he doesn't have a phone, no sim card or something, so it doesn't sound that hopeful..I've always wanted to play at Raggamuffin, not the first time it's come up, our no.1 reggae festival. will see what the music God's have to say on that one. The music God's give me inspiration, but not quite enough to overcome the lethargy on the street today. They don't give me much money,  I guess I can't complain since I landed a $50 note a couple of days ago..

 Still as I head towards home I wonder what I'm doing, and why I don't get a real job?? This obsession with music - is ruining my life, but giving me so much joy at the same time. I just can't seem to give it up.

aaargh......squeezing the life out of life...

wanted to feel hot, wanted to feel full of life, instead I feel shot, 
and not a lot ... of juice left...
what a challenging, balancing act this is...
a single moment of bliss, from a simple kiss, then this....
the day after low down blues, you choose, I lose
Just confuses me, I blow a fuse and leave
I trust in all that is, even in this
yeah back to this moment of peace
back to just selling each piece
each note is release
each phrase is fierce,
piercing the silence with harmonic sound
the bow is my weapon, on the strings I take aim
and fire with inspired melody - I aim for the heart

Music, it's such a rocky path I tread, stick and stones may not break my bones bones but twigs and tree roots can trip me up..I'm always searching for music, like looking for treasure, I have to dig deep for it. I catch a phrase here and there of someone elses music, and I toss it from hand to hand, between my fingers and my bow, weaving something new from the threads of sound that remain. I choose some of their colours and add some of my own, the colors begin to sing their own tune. I've just got to know this melody...then it flies away, it's no longer mine...as I look up into the sky, watching it disappear into the clouds, I trip over my own expectations...

 Landing with a thud in the mud.... I leave the sky behind, want to cry but then, with eyes still dry I find, in
the earth beneath my feet again, another friend. I embrace the bass again, the story ends - for now...

Magic is why I'm here....

Just be happiness now... I remind myself. The contrast between where I am, and the beauty of my magical inner world, can be great - but it's the contrast that provides the inspiration to create beauty and love where sometimes, it's feels like there isn't any. The world can feel dry and clinical, lacking in imagination...the law can feel oppressive and ...love can feel like it's being squeezed out of existence in the the never ending quest for money in this world. But art is the place where all the pieces of the jigsaw fit back together for me. I wake up in the morning to the confusion of my life...and if you knew my story...you'd know just how confusing it is...but clarity comes back when I connect with the source within that shows me the beauty and magic that was always there, waiting for me to find it... I realise I've got to pay more attention to the magic within, and less to the clamour of a world that demands attention, but gives back only more confusion.. so.. I'm losing the confusion,

and drinking a profusion of my spiritual cup of tea.

I only feel right, when I follow the light..

paint a world that's bright enough to see

....all those people bent out of shape

following the path that leads them out the gate

to an out of shape kind of fate
people bent out of shape,create

a prison out of freedom

a world of despair

but beauty is always only ever right here

even in the midst of tragedy, is everywhere

Moments of Magic on the street....

Living and working on the street can be hard, I spend so much time out there, I feel like I live there, but unlike some of the people I walk past daily, I'm just a visitor. There's always group of people camping outside the farmers store on Queen St. They sit on folded cardboard boxes, with a sign asking for change. sometimes I can't face what they represent....often I take a detour and cut back to High st till I get past them... (and the guy at the kebab shop, but that's another story...). But strangely, when I do connect, there's only beauty and love in the exchange. Yesterday, I forgot until it was too late, to veer left into Victoria St, then past the windows full of cakes on High St....So I armed  myself with a smile, and dropped 50c into the hat as I walked by. I imagined I was walking by, but next thing I'd stopped and was playing a few tunes on my violin, and they were singing along in Maori. We exchanged hugs and the customary kiss on the cheek, and one of the women smiled the kind of smile that comes from the bottom of the deepest heart...and I felt warmed and heartened by the aroha (Maori word for love), that was shared. Beneath the tattoos, and the smell of glue, the wairua (spirit) of the people was strong....strong enough to lift my spirits for the rest of the walk up the steep slopes of upper Queen st.

Lost in Inner Space

I

 Cut gluten out of my diet a couple of days ago. Living on a budget has meant $2 pies and bread. Today I had that familiar feeling of not being able to move, not being able to talk - for most of the day. I hope  it's just the gluten coming out of my brain, and that the also familiar feeling of gluten free clarity will return in a day or two. So much I wanted to write about, all vanishing as my fingers meet the keys. I'm in the $1/hr internet cafe at the top of Queen St. My brain hurts.It's good though to know I've still got one, sometimes I wonder?? I long to escape back into the dream world of my paintings... Become lost permanently in inner space. The guy next to me is looking at photos of girls, another way to get lost, I guess. I like to get lost in color and fantasy. Like a kid, I paint a world that isn't real enough to get confused with this one. But sometimes, to me that world feels more real and more comforting than the "real" places I often find myself. The inner world is where the magic is, where rules and boundaries of the outer world disappear.I can find that world here too, looking at a beautiful tree, or playing with a kitten, or watching the waves wash up on a remote shoreline, I need that sense of magic like some people need alchohol. I remind myself to find space for magic every day. It's been too long...