Betrayal of self: Who do you trust?

[New Leaf]

Hi Copa and Cedar,
This is very exciting that we can look at these women who have made great strides in there older lives. How wonderful.

We have much to live for and look forward too.
I have earned every bit of my short sassy pixie cut, silver hair.And then some, to say the least.

I don't know what I meant Copa, but I am so upset with my kids and grands.

Prickly with it; and just who do they think they are Cedar hisses, narrowing her eyes and hissing in a monotone like someone very frightening.

Cedar, we have a tough time of it where this is concerned. I feel you.....
I have still not spoken with my Tornado, I have had moments of wanting to text her that I love her and miss her, but my anger holds me back.
I am righteously indignant.

My grands I feel, are a product of their environment. I wonder, how they will view their upbringing, when they are older. Only time will tell. I hope upon all hopes that they will not perpetuate the crazy their lives have been. Poor babies.

So, onward to the next thing, which is focusing on rebuilding, strengthening, finding love and joy in the things I can do.

Trying to get out of paralysis mode, doing the best I can to do well in my work, and take better care of myself, my house, etc.etc.

So much to do.

Thank you Copa, so much for sharing the life of this wonderful woman. She is terrific and bold.

Iris Apfel, started all over after 83, my goodness!

How marvelous!

leafy

 

[pasajes4]

I remember looking at an album of my grandmother's pictures. In the pictures she is stunning. It is the 1920's and she is a dancer with a vaudeville troupe. I made the comment, " Mamie you were beautiful!". She looked at me with such hurt in her eyes. She said to my ignorant 13 year old self, " What do you mean was beautiful? I am still beautiful. My age does not diminish my beauty. I look in the mirror and I see a woman whose beauty has matured and shines through to those who take the time to really know me."

 

[New Leaf]

Washed up at 41? Oh no, no, no. 40's are the new 30's and so on and so forth. Age is just a number.....
leafy

 

[New Leaf]

I remember looking at an album of my grandmother's pictures. In the pictures she is stunning. It is the 1920's and she is a dancer with a vaudeville troupe. I made the comment, " Mamie you were beautiful!".

Hi Pas, one of my favorite things to do with my Nana was to look through her old photo albums, black pages with hand written captions in white script. The photos were held on the page by metal corners, glued on. Nana even had some tin types of her family.
My Nana had a story of a party she went to during prohibition, it was at a hotel, and they really had bath tub gin! Our grandmothers were quite adventurous!

Thank you for sharing your Mamie story, how sweet. She was right. We can have that attitude also.

Society today just views wrinkles. I have to laugh at the ads for face creams, talking about wrinkles and the actresses are what...25?
Funny, these advertiser- psychologolizers.
We are too smart for this nonsense.

I miss my Nana. She lived until 96.
God bless her heart.

leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So, I am back from breakfast, now.

:O)

This question of who to trust ties in to the idea of attitude toward work. That attitude we must learn to hold toward our work of sacred respect. When I think about how I view my contribution to my life, or the living of my life that my work is, I see contempt; see my mother's eyes in the ten thousand disparagements. I understand clearly that I am imagining a set of toxic circumstances which may not have been what was wished for me. But the toxicity of self-disparagement was natural to me; may still be natural to me. Self-disparagement is different than humility. Self-disparagement precludes self-respect and so, precludes integrity.

Maybe, these are the areas of the heart we are evolving through, now.

The Benedictine (or Buddhist) attitude toward understanding that our work is sacred space, is the choice to devote our time of our lives and merits our attention to the task at hand because we are blessing it in the doing of the thing.

Sacred work. With joy in it; taking joy in it.

I am only at the place where I am realizing: When chopping onions just chop onions is a practice. I do not have the joy piece yet but I think that is where we are going. To that kind of...I don't know. Purity of experience, maybe. Nothing between what we do and our Presence.

Now, there are Negative Tapes in that space that should be sacred, that should be silent.

You guys. This is true. We have always believed the negative tapes were just there. Like they belonged there. We had listened to them for so long, been so frozen in place by the sound of them, by the ugliness and terror in them.

What if they are illegitimate, those tapes?

What if the practice of work with full intent is part of the answer to Copa's question: Who do we trust.

And the answer is that the only person we can trust is ourselves, and even we let ourselves down, sometimes.

But for us to know who we are really, those negative tapes will have to go. That is sacred space, that place where those tapes hiss away just beneath conscious awareness.

That is sacred space.

I think once we know that, we will have reclaimed enough of ourselves that we will be able to trust ourselves to remain Present. That is what trust is I think Copa. It is not deserting ourselves, not leaving ourselves exposed to the loneliness or the anger or fear. That is hard for me to say but that is what we have been taught to do. That self desertion is a piece of what our abusers taught so they could step in.

I am not communicating this concept well.

It has to do with self-assured ~ something more than confidence. That something would be trust that whatever happens, we will have tried with our entire hearts and concentration and self, holding nothing back without having to push ourselves, without having to risk to do that.

Copa, you have been posting about stepping back and allowing another to take precedence. This thing I am working with this morning has to do with that.

So, think of it this way. We have been looking at pictures of powerful or famous women ~ or of women completely self-possessed, as was the whore in my imagery of the beautiful whore washing her feet in the sun, naked as the day she was born. She was portraying Centered, that actress. Portraying intention and pleasure in her work, in her washing her feet.

That is Presence.

That was the magic in that imagery.

That Benedictine or Buddhist concept of our work made sacred because we are doing it.

So, another image: Think of actresses (or actors) you admire. Now, think of the term "cattle call". That is how actors or actresses or dancers are chosen for the roles they take on, and through which they represent something we love about ourselves.

Cattle call.

Where does the person, the vulnerable Marilyn Monroe person who is really Norma Jean...how does she scrape up what is required to make it to the cattle call and go through with it and do it well enough to be chosen or survive not being Chosen and believe in herself enough to try, with her whole heart though she has lost and lost the role she believed was her own, again?

That is where we are going.

But I don't know a better way to describe it.

That feeling is trust.

To read the paper and find the cattle call and show up and win or lose. And if we win, then to have faith in our capacities to perform, and to win again.

And if we lose, to believe anyway.

That is trust.

No one can give that to us Copa. And once we are there, no one can take it away. But we can only get there by attending cattle call after cattle call. We see better prepared dancers; we see people more beautiful than we are. But somehow, we do not desert ourselves.

How amazingly everything is coming together.

The beginning has to do with those concepts of work, which is internal locus of control requiring us to believe something sacred about ourselves and our choices, and with the concept of Germany, which has to do with externalizing internal locus of control without shame or fear that we ~ something here to do with fraudulence.

With that certain belief that we are not authentic.

***

I saw my very hard work and my joy in making the Christmas or making the dinner or getting the job or the degree as secondary, unimportant things, when in reality, they were the sacred things and not how these gifts that I created and gave freely, from the heart, were received.

So, this ties in too with appreciation; with something about what has happened with our children having reflected back to us "fraudulent" or "predetermined failure how could something I valued have concluded in any other way".

I am thinking here of Going North's post to us about the mindset of those trapped in addiction.

That post was so stellar Going, if you are reading along.

All of these observations we each are making tie in to integrity of self and purpose and intent. In that sense, it all ties in to Germany.

And that imagery of cattle call.

That is how we learn to hold ourselves safe.

Cattle call after cattle call. If we could do that, with intent, and without any bitterness. So, that would have to do with humility.

We are back to that lesson about mindset and our work.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It is the 1920's and she is a dancer with a vaudeville troupe. I made the comment, " Mamie you were beautiful!". She looked at me with such hurt in her eyes. She said to my ignorant 13 year old self, " What do you mean was beautiful? I am still beautiful. My age does not diminish my beauty. I look in the mirror and I see a woman whose beauty has matured and shines through to those who take the time to really know me."

This is where we are going, too.

My grandmother was beautiful, as well. In that same sense of celebrating her beauty, and playing with it and enjoying it. She would show us pictures of herself as a young woman, wrapped in fur, looking back over her shoulder directly into the camera.

I have never forgotten that.

Copa, my grandmother had huge caches of jewelry, and loved to wear it. I wear very little jewelry.

It has something to do with confidence, I think.

pasa, your grandmother. A vaudeville dancer! Where did she find the courage to do it do you suppose, pasa? I don't know whether you read the post about cattle calls...but your grandmother will have believed in herself in that way.

Ha! Your story to us about your grandmother has brought the strongest, clearest memories of my own grandmother for me. Whatever it was she was doing when the picture of her wrapped in fur was taken, my grandmother became a lady welder during WWII, and worked in the shipyards making battleships.

We have extraordinary women in our lineages.

Thank you, pasa.

I love my grandmother very much. She was magical to me. It was fun to think about her again.

I love it that your grandmother was a vaudeville dancer. She will have been a comedienne also, and very beautiful with excellent timing.

I am glad I am a grandmother, too. Here is a story from Baklava Grand. When she was little, she told me last summer, she had me confused in her mind with Mary Poppins, who also carried a large, magical bag and could make everything alright.

:O)

Cedar

Isn't that something, you guys.

 

[Copabanana]

What if the practice of work with full intent is part of the answer to Copa's question: Who do we trust.

When I first went back to college, with the intention of doing advanced study, I would procrastinate. I was working full time so there were always good reasons to put school work aside. But I would get anxious, and delay and delay. Until the pressure was so intense, I would begin. And then? Immersed in the work it would be the most beautiful and enjoyable and diverting activity I could imagine. I would thrill at the way my brain worked and what I could create.

It required not at all discipline or self-control or responsibility. The things I accused myself as lacking. An inner Germany.

It was my relationship with myself that I called into question, by procrastinating. I could not allow myself the bliss of creating, or being my own. I still struggle with it.

And the answer is that the only person we can trust is ourselves, and even we let ourselves down, sometimes.

Yes.

But for us to know who we are really, those negative tapes will have to go. That is sacred space, that place where those tapes hiss away just beneath conscious awareness.

Yes.

I think once we know that, we will have reclaimed enough of ourselves that we will be able to trust ourselves to remain Present. That is what trust is I think Copa. It is not deserting ourselves, not leaving ourselves exposed to the loneliness or the anger or fear.

Yes. Or self-doubt or self-derision or self-contempt.

That self desertion is a piece of what our abusers taught so they could step in.

I still struggle with it too much.

Yesterday M stormed into the room where I was on the computer. And began to go on and on about animals in the Master Bedroom, and how could I allow this. On the bed. Disaster, to him. And I envisioned the dogs on the bed. Romy and Dolly both. On my mother's bed. I panicked. And ran to the bedroom to see this crime. I cannot tell you how frightened and panicked was I.

So I surveyed the bedroom, and saw no animals. Who did this? You did this he accused me. What did I do? You let the animals in the bedroom.

I could not remember even permitting the dogs to enter the house, let alone our bedroom. So I thought to myself. I have Alzheimer's. Already. Because I do not remember letting the dogs into the house, let alone the bedroom. Which I would never do without putting Romy into his kennel. And I had done so. Because M said so. I had let the dogs into the house. And did not remember. Worst of all, I had left the bedroom door open and they had hopped onto the bed. I remembered not one bit of it.

And then M calmed down enough so that I understood it was the cat, Stella who had entered the bedroom and made herself comfortable on the bed. She may have followed me, and I had not seen her. I dodged the Alzheimer bullet.

See when M gets upset, he gets agitated and powerful--in Spanish. I get afraid of his intensity. I panic. I cannot understand his Spanish when he is worked up.

I then desert myself when I get scared.

So I walked back to the room I had been in. Silent. I do not know what I looked like. But M followed me, saying "I know I am difficult. But try to understand."

All I can feel right now, is that I desert myself. I become afraid. I panic. And I am gone with the wind.

Copa, you have been posting about stepping back and allowing another to take precedence.

I have?

What I am thinking about here is that when another wants to step in front of us...into the light...we have a choice. We can panic and feel overshadowed and usurped or we can smile, realizing that we do not need the light. We do not need or depend upon feedback ratings, or applause. It does not mean that the only place we have is no longer here and what will we do? We exist just fine thank you in ourselves, alone. Nothing changes without the light. We can just wait a second. And everything will be whole and possible, once again.

The panic, the invisibility, the sense of lack or of lacking, is archaic. It comes from the time when our sisters did this. Pushed us aside. Copied us. Took our toys. Tattled on us, telling untruths. And there was nowhere to go. Everywhere and everything could be diminished by them. Especially us.

It is no longer true.

the vulnerable Marilyn Monroe person who is really Norma Jean...how does she scrape up what is required to make it to the cattle call and go through with it and do it well enough to be chosen or survive not being Chosen and believe in herself enough to try, with her whole heart though she has lost and lost the role she believed was her own, again?

This is so interesting, Cedar. I will think about it a lot.

Because to do well, she would have to fuse a part of herself, give of herself to be present. It would have had to be her. Not the role. And how many of these can we win? And rendered invisible without a place to show that, to be that, without the role. You leave and no longer exist in that way that you did for those few minutes. What a loss.

I wonder if that is why I wanted to be an artist. Because art making is exactly this. A vision that is unique in every way. Your vision. And then it is done and it cannot exist in the same way, again. It is just paper. And will not live unless another sees it. And you have no control what so ever over that. The art depends on others to be seen.

My house is full of art which I have gathered up from thrift stores. It was all thrown away. Discarded. That is part of its value to me.

Some of the jewelry I am buying is individual pieces, created lovingly by an artisan with that same unique vision. And discarded. That is some of what I am trying to buy now.

I will post about that. About how my eye has changed in this work of buying.

To read the paper and find the cattle call and show up and win or lose. And if we win, then to have faith in our capacities to perform, and to win again.

Yes.

My sister found men to date by means of internet sites, like Match.com. I was horrified at the pain and shame of it, how you can show up at a Starbucks, have somebody look you over and after a few minutes leave. You did not make the grade.

My sister said, "you get used to it. So it doesn't hurt or even matter."

So many women and men participate in the cattle call putting themselves as the article on the market. Not their vision or creativity or work. Themselves.

I will ponder, too, about this. What it means.

There was a show last night on CNN about men that attend workshops to learn how to be pick up artists of women. I will post about that, too. I hope.

And if we lose, to believe anyway.

That is trust.

There has to be a way that they do not define it or feel it as "losing." They must not imbue those who judge with the power. I do not know how or what they do, but it is a marvel. Think about Al Pacino and Marlon Brando and DeNiro who all came out of the NY acting scene. All of these men have enormous egos. I can begin to think about the process, with them in my minds eye.

But Marilyn? How did she do it? But she did it with the men in her life, too. It seems she allowed herself to be traded and used. So her ability to participate in a cattle call might have been a measure of low self-worth, not high.

No one can give that to us Copa. And once we are there, no one can take it away. But we can only get there by attending cattle call after cattle call. We see better prepared dancers; we see people more beautiful than we are. But somehow, we do not desert ourselves.

Yes. This the goal.

I went to a nearby City about 6 months ago for Tango classes. M was so kind and generous to go with me. It would take us the whole day because we went by train, walked 45 minutes each way to the studio in the heat. Ate, and waited for the train again. It took the whole day.

We went maybe 3 or 4 times. The teacher was a young man from Argentina. He was as good a dancer as there is near my small City.

I think all he saw was an old, fat lady who panted (my yet to be diagnosed Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)). I was just not worth it to him, you guys. And when M realized it, and I did too, we never went back again. M was mad. Because he always believes the best about everything. He gives them that. That chance. This young man did not care because he could not see the value in me. The value that I dance again.

So, as I look at that now, I see that the process involves putting oneself in the center, as the center of value and purpose and intention. If somebody does not get it, get our value, they are not good enough for us. It is allowing life to unfold as it is supposed to. Of having hope and belief that what is meant to be will be. Shall be. And keep walking on. Doing it. I guess this is what you are getting at, Cedar, humility.

Showing up. Doing one's very best. Defining oneself in the process. It is only about me. And gratitude for the opportunity. Even if it is one time. Like the cattle call. Because if that is the only time, we did it once. We accept it with gratitude and grace. It is about movement. And purpose. And hope. Your almost favorite word, Cedar, hope.

I will find a tango teacher. Not here. But somewhere.

The beginning has to do with those concepts of work, which is internal locus of control requiring us to believe something sacred about ourselves and our choices, and with the concept of Germany, which has to do with externalizing internal locus of control without shame or fear that we ~ something here to do with fraudulence.

Yes.

Cattle call after cattle call. If we could do that, with intent, and without any bitterness. So, that would have to do with humility.

I did not see it as humility, at first, Cedar, but now I do.

Maybe it is a belief in our integrity. By integrity I mean wholeness. Indivisibility.

In Spanish the word integral means whole or in its essential state. Like the number, an integer, which is a whole number, I think, that is not divisible by another. I am too rushed here to look at the dictionary, but you get my drift.

Our integrity, our wholeness does not need one thing to be whole. It already is. Those actors may think and feel: I am me. I am enough. I will try my absolute best to do this thing. I will be one hundred percent present and involved. Because that is who I am. And if it goes further, fine. If it does not, I go on. Still whole.

The humility comes in, too, in realizing that you do not compete with one other person. Even though it may be designed this way. Set up that way. You are not competing. You are just you, showing up.

That must be why those famous actors refused the academy award. Like Brando, I think. Because they were never competing against anybody else. Especially their fellows.

Baklava Grand. When she was little, she told me last summer, she had me confused in her mind with Mary Poppins, who also carried a large, magical bag and could make everything alright.

Oh how sweet, sweet. You do this, Cedar, for me, too. You make everything alright. Sometimes I look for your posts with this anticipation. Cedar will make it alright. Will make my hurt go away.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

For Feeling Sad: Lest you forget.

COPA