In fact, I’ve realized……that you’re too perfect.

As I burn in your glaring perfections, I’ve realized I’m going to have to find a way to dim your light, if there is any hope of keeping my existing mental models from crumbling to sand.

To keep from losing my own fragile sense of conditioned limitations.

Your light is simply too blindingly brilliant and bright.

And not just for me.

Do you even know how your light makes some people FEEL?

Especially in faraway galaxies, where there is less light, and everyone isn’t already perfect as they are? Do you ever even think of that, or are you too busy shining, because it is simply your nature?

In any case, your shining is REALLY inconsiderate of you.

Both as a reader, and as a human. Turn it down right now, or I won’t let you read my blog anymore.

Do you have any idea how hard your light makes it for me to FOCUS on everything people say is wrong with my world, and all the many different things they tell me I must do and be and eat in order to be good?

Do you know what it does to me, to receive the perfect gift of your attentions, and even your subscriptions? It undoes me entirely.

And that’s not even to bring up your massive, voracious, utterly EXPANSIVE dreams and desires.

Reader, you KNOW that you can’t just have these dreams that you passionately give your all to fulfilling, that you cultivate with so much faith and consistency.

It makes me terribly uncomfortable and insecure.

I……need you to change. Will you change, for me? I want to feel…….. in control.

You can’t just read, and like, and subscribe. You can’t. We mustn’t. The voraciousness of your desire for expression completely overwhelms me.

Wait…….you’re going to connect to your desire, dreams, and purpose EVEN MORE…..AND you’re going to keep emanating love in all that you do, while continuing to follow and support my creative journey?

AND YOU ONLY PLAN TO GROW BIGGER, BRIGHTER, AND MORE VISIBLE, CASTING ALL SHAME ASIDE AND JOINING ME ON THIS RIDE?

You’re not going to shrink or hide your dreams, desires, or expression, even A LITTLE BIT to appease me, and make me more comfortable?

YOU’RE NOT EVEN GOING TO SILENCE OR SHRINK YOUR VOICE, OR DWELL IN THE WORLD WHICH ASKS ME TO SILENCE AND SHRINK MINE?

WOW.

And after all that, you’re just going sit there, in all of your pleasure and glory, reading my blog?

I’ll have to find a way to forgive you, and myself, for our many perfections. I’ll have to find a way to forgive our entire, beautiful world. Don’t apologize.

In other other news, my gift card to the best bakery in the world has turned into food, has turned into energy, has turned into cells in my body. My whole birthday month has been a feast month! Full of steaks, and sandwiches, nutritious movement, and writing workshops.

Thank you friends and subscribers. The love I feel, and the support I feel for continuing my art and existence, is well beyond my wildest expectations. I feel like I am in Willy Wonka’s elevator in the final scene, the moment before we crash through the ceiling.

Only Willy Wonka is a wild-eyed, winking, smiling composite of all of my muses and investors, known and unknown, energetic and otherwise. I am wildly grateful.

August is almost over, and I am so excited for fall. I have been collecting beautiful little vignettes in my mind, of all the moments I have witnessed a single leaf fall, so far.

It is my absolute favorite season, however Earth decides to paint her canvas this year.

(I decided months ago that if Atlanta wants to act like she’s Miami, I will take the liberty of dressing like I’m in Miami.)

I have three exciting updates for September.

(If you don’t like people celebrating good things in their lives, please skip this part, and reconsider reading the rest of this blog :)

1. I have some creative risks planned for September which are deeply exciting to me.

2. Literally as you read this, I am moving into a new, bright, spacious home that I am genuinely thrilled to be inhabiting. I have such a THING for modern houses, the ones that look very minimalistic, and are filled with light. I am both amazed & so grateful to say that I’ll soon be inhabiting such a home for the fall. Easily the most structurally beautiful space I’ve ever lived in! Omgoddess.

3. I paid some of my very first bills last month entirely with money made as a writer, (and took an incredible writing & embodiment workshop!)

4. I’ve been feeling into what the spirits of generosity and celebration really feel like for me…..and weaving those energies more intentionally into my creative practice, and life. Noting ways to rubber-band more readily and quickly into these states, from other, less delicious ones.

I don’t recall the last time I was thrilled to pay a bill, but I guess that’s becoming my reality. Being paid to shine as who I actually am? Is there an even greater financial win, for an artist of any medium?

The shape I’m seeing for September is a spiral.

Coiled energy, potential energy, vortex energy. Spiraling inwards, in reflection.

The movement, the action, the power of choice which emanates from our deepest center.

That moment after all of the outward action of summer, where we take a moment to curl in on ourselves in reflection, nurture the lessons we have gained, and tend to any wounds we’ve sustained in the gaining.

It is a heart-softening energy.

It reminds me of the moment in Wachuma ceremony where we become the bat: the body and senses the medicine and softens around it, curling inwards, melting internal and external boundaries.

(I am really excited to write about Wachuma & plant medicines more deeply (on my other blog ;) this month!)

September’s shape is also inspired by August’s reading list. I’ve been reading The Vortex by Esther Hicks, and loving it! I particularly love the part about consciously dwelling on joyful thoughts and memories, and find it SO useful for writing practice, especially as I begin to take more creative risks and dig deep.

September’s creative risk #1: Practicing telling challenging stories WELL.

A lot of my writing recently has focused on learning to tell the stories inside me which feel challenging to tell. Challenging to authorities, real or imagined, challenging to the status quo, and challenging to my cherished self-concepts.

My ambition is to tell these sorts of stories well, while staying in my center, in ways which can benefit my readers, my spirit, and my world.

As the process moves along, I am starting to recognize that to tell the sorts of stories which hold a lot of negative charge well, takes a lot of suspension of identity and self-seriousness! Like, way more than I expected!

Telling a challenging story, while intentionally creating a net positive-charge with the work, causes the vibration of all the sensations and emotions which were involved in the story to deeply activate, and come alive. Publicly dragging shadow out for a beautiful dance this way feels very intense! Storytelling gives the option and immense power of learning to lead shadow, rather than to merely be led by it.

Still, I’d rather dance with light. I’d like to learn to deeply capitalize (emotionally, vibrationally, and financially!) on the rubber-band effect that the act of very intentionally concentrating positivity and celebration into challenging circumstances has…..in life, as in storytelling.

Every story well-told is like a poison, in that telling it changes the writer, and receiving it changes the reader.

Every story well-told is like a poison, in that it has the power to kill pity, arrogance, misunderstanding, and illusion. In the writer and the reader alike.

In any case, feeling the poison and medicine of my old stories swirl through me, is an incredible reminder to keep being guided by my inner star, no matter what comes up.

To be very mindful of the stories I tell myself, as well as the stories I choose to surround myself with, via the company I choose.

I can’t be inhaling mid stories, not even secondhand and you won’t ever catch me growing mid-grade stories. I need the good-good. I need the Blue Dream. I need the sticky, potent Earth-candy of depth, and meaning And I am willing to work for it, honey.

To do this, I plan to:

1. Refuse to inhale (listen to) or exhale (tell) mid-grade stories. If there is self-victimization or blame in the story, it is unmistakably mid. Judgement and hatred is OK, because we are all human and feel these things, but where is the contrast? Where is the desire? Where is the pleasure, and wish-fulfillment?

2. Avoid creative spaces where mid-grade stories are frequently and unquestioningly inhaled. If people around me seem dejected, confused, and defeated, mids are definitely involved, and I must quickly make my escape. If people around me are amped up, flowing with self-expression, glowing with an otherworldly energy…..we have entered the realm of the dank.

3. STOP growing mids with my stories, when I could just as easily, with a bit of focus and intent, grow some Blue Dream…. and sink into the Earth, or float up to heaven and take my audience with me, with my meaning-making faculties. That’s what they’re fucking for.

The plant for September is cannabis.

She is poison, and medicine. I know the West Coast is currently blossoming with a very hauntingly beautiful smell, and it drifts through my day dreams. My hands feel sticky, even writing this.

September’s creative risk #2 will be diving into visual art, and film, after a very long hiatus!

I’m adding film and photography to my writing and art practice, again!

I am secretly, (now not-so-secretly) obsessed with photography, and creating video and film. I am also secretly (now not-so-secretly) obsessed with playing dress up, persona and character play, creating little mini-sets and acting. Many readers don’t know that I did acting school for 2 years, and consider it my life’s greatest passion and love!

Acting is like telling a story with my entire body and soul.

I’ve also discovered the joys of dressing up in character to write, and I plan to document the fun I’m having, to the fullest, on Patreon. Meet me there, and witness my visual world-creation in real-time.

I feel that amidst moving, and all of the changes in my personal & professional life, two creative risks may be enough. ;)

Yay, September!

Now, some house-love & gratitude!

Having a grounded, established, lovely living space is EVERYTHING for my writing and art.

I’m so deeply affected by the quality of my surroundings. Having a space which reflects my love of beauty back to me gives me so much pleasure, as well as the ability to plan ahead, and sustain lengthier projects!

It finally feels like I am building a secure base to greet the world from, even on the drifting, ever-changing cloud of my life. It’s hard to describe what beginning to have this feels like, after not having it for so long…..but it’s a little bit like having swallowed a star, and being absolutely filled with light and hope. I can’t help but envision and build new futures.

September themes I’m feeling

Faith, generosity with self & other, resilience, and celebration.

Do you know what I love most of all?

When we individually and collectively have the courage and humility to admit that, in each and every moment, we are held and sustained by a force which is infinitely loving, and infinitely beyond our control and definition. I don’t care what anyone calls it. I love it when we own up to the mystery. To the fact that we’re all little kids playing dress-up before the IMMENSITY of the divine creative force, every single day.

I love it most of all when we all lay all of the guilt and shame and hate and desire to control and inequity and eons-old oppressions by the water. When we sing, dance, scream, and create in the name of this force. When we own & make our unique handprint on this world, like it matters more than anything in the world.

Making art is the only way I can begin to wrap my mind around handling how perfect this world and this force is, as I may have briefly mentioned in a previous post.

What I love about fall is what an ecstatic creation time it always is for me, how visible the forces governing life and death become. It sets the perfect stage to build faith in the cycles of resurrection, and redemption.

I feel so connected to Earth, in the fall.

Every time I see a dainty leaf dance its way to death, I celebrate how resilient the Earth is. How resilient I am, we are. .

‘Resilient’ is never something I consciously wanted to become, or even something I considered a gift, until recently. It feels a little bit like being a rugged, weathered stuffed animal that some pitiless and very adventurous little child has dragged through hell and back. (I wonder if Earth feels this way).

Sometimes it is the shadowy gifts (the ones which I most struggle to fully accept, receive, and acknowledge as such) which can mean the most in retrospect.

Sometimes it is the experiences which many would judge as ‘ugly’ which hold so much hidden depth, and treasure.

There’s nothing particularly sweet or pretty about the ways in which I became resilient.

Telling those stories is a challenge for me, because it involves taming & rubber-banding out of my own misunderstanding & self-victimizations, and the shame and pity that grows from them. Throwing a saddle on these lower aspects, and riding through the depths of the creative process. Hot.

The voice of David Lynch says, the deeper the water, the uglier the fish.

I say, the deeper the gift, the uglier the stories it came from.

I love so-called ugly fish.

I love so-called ugly gifts, like resilience.

I love so-called ugly people.

And so-called ugly stories.

I love a wabi-sabi gift, place, person, or story. Frayed at the edges, veneer hopelessly chipping and flaking away, but total and clear in purpose.

I love feeling the generosity of both loving & being loved in this way. In all crumbling, immortal totality.

One part of The Vortex which I LOVED, was the part where she spoke about soulmates. Specifically, how so many of us are deeply annoyed or even disgusted and offended by our soulmates, having no clue that they are our soulmates.

This tells me to be much more generous with people.

Especially the ones who richly annoy me.

They may all just be my soulmates.

Trying to realign my heart to goodness and abundance, through space, time, and the crusty wabi-sabi layers of my own resistance.

I may just have something that they deeply require, to move forward.

They may all just be gangster-checking my generosity.

In which case, challenge, accepted.

If I see someone without something which I have, I will give. I will give as much as I wish to take, of whatever it is I have a surplus of.

How can anyone ever learn the contours and laws of something which is consistently hidden and withheld from them?

Generosity, for the ULTIMATE win.

September is all about generosity, to me. The harvest is in, whatever it may look like, whatever the numerical representation may currently look like. It is time to celebrate & share.

Material generosity, generosity of heart, and also generosity of spirit, is available to anyone with enough courage and faith, in any airless socioeconomic hell-trap, at any time.

Generosity is a celebration, a beautiful, invisible tea party, happening in all worlds, at all times.

And all it takes to get the party started, at any time, is one teeny, tiny generous act. Every day holds the seeds of many such small celebrations. An entire garden.

Any act of generosity, thought, word, or deed, is a great way to rubber-band out of any lower state. The more impactful the act for the recipient, the more powerful the rubber-band effect, for me. And, gratitude for generosity shown? Also an immensely powerful way to rubber-band out of any sense of lack.

Thanks to generosity, I have a home. Thanks to generosity, the questions I get to ask myself are different and better each day. (The most generous thing anyone can ever do is help someone change the questions they regularly ask themselves. For the much-better. )

Also thanks to generosity, I get to reinvent myself, and my model of creativity, work, and home. To take some risks.

I get the spaciousness to contemplate and document the things I see, the spaces and resources to build and nurture my craft, and the freedom to experientially discern which turns on the path are worth my focus. There is no art without a surfeit of generosity, in any culture.

Generosity also means I get to take my ancient little dog for long walks in the moonlight, doing a French lesson while his sweet little legs excitedly tremble their way forward. I get to actually repay the debt of his loyalty. This dog guarded me when all I had to my name was a bag of cashews and a car, reader. My lifestyle targets include feeding him an entire steak.

Thanks to generosity, I am sitting in the cutest writing studio in the world, well-fed, rested, writing and exploring my mental models of everything from wealth, to love, to generosity, to celebration.

Getting to explore and adjust mental models?

Now THAT is a true luxury, never to be taken for granted. A world which allows me the time and freedom to do that, is surely a realm of oceanic generosity.

And generosity always begets celebration!

When I feel the generosity of my world and the people in it, I can’t help but be moved to celebrate.

The spirit of celebration is always everywhere, at all times.

The cosmic woman (The Universe!) lives to be celebrated every day, because every day is her birthday. The day she makes herself, and life, anew. Is there a woman in your experience who makes you FEEL? Celebrate her like your life, and hers, depends on it! Because it does.

As my world-view and opportunities expand, my classes and offerings are expanding. The ways I am able to create and give are expanding. There is no greater gift than this. I work and create in spaces which celebrate feeling, and I am so grateful.

When my mental models for love and home and self-worth were much smaller and less conducive to who I actually was, my yoga mat, (and the OG yoga mat of Earth’s body) were the places where I actually had enough silence and peace to hear the soft voices reminding me of who I really was, and could become.

Now, I hear and choose to trust and celebrate my body’s voice, and I teach others to do the same. Quieter, perhaps, but much deeper than the voice of habitual thought. The barely-audible rumblings that simultaneously have the power to turn our knees to jelly, that come from the heart of our bodies, the heart of our Earth. I trust THAT voice, over all others. That’s the voice of the cosmic woman.

She tells me to heal, by recycling pain into the deepest service my soul can possibly offer. Offering it up, like the trees offer their leaves each fall.

This is how the loneliness, alienation, and pain of a life becomes worth it. This is how stars, and diamonds, are formed.

Choosing the rubber-band effect.

Consistently choosing thoughts of resilience, generosity, and celebration. Consistently walking away from less expansive energies.

Part of the deepest service I can offer is not dimming my light, shrinking my desires, squashing or constantly rushing to change what I feel, or ignoring the call of my own dreams. For ANYONE. Not even you, perfect reader.

The realm of habitual light-dimming can be challenging to walk away from, when it has become familiar and comfortable.

Walk away from the dim, soft light, I must. Because today, I have the feeling that the world I’ve been dreaming of, is already here and now.

In this new world…..

Loneliness is always fuel for deeper togetherness.

Alienation is always fuel for truer connection.

And pain is always fuel for more magic, more pleasure.

Every moment of ‘negativity’ is an opportunity to rubber-band into twice as much positive charge, if I choose and allow that!

And, I do. That’s what this month is all about, for me! Let’s step into this world, together.

I hope you take some creative risks, this month. Tell me about it.

I hope you tap into what your most generous self FEELS like. Show me.

And, I hope you celebrate it all.

Before I slip into the vivid and deeply vulnerable dream of visual creation, I have some September questions for you.

What do you have to celebrate?

What are some gifts you’ve gotten, which you hesitate to claim as gifts? What makes you hesitant? What makes them gifts?

Where you can you give, as much as you wish to take?

What are some ways you serve, and dream of serving?

If the cosmic woman had a home in your life, made up of all your stories around the feminine, what would her home be made of? What would it look like?

Tell me in the comments.

Love you!

XO, Natalia.

Where I conflate and distort other people’s stories, filling them with my own projections, and everything else I am sucking down my matcha trying so hard not to feel. Maybe I do this to avoid being consumed with outrage for how ridiculously, beatifically, hot-pink Barbie-levels of perfect everything and everyone in this existence is, including me. How ridiculously good we all have it, in a ridiculous amount of incredibly diverse ways.

I’m gazing into myself through the mirror of everyone and everything else, and it is like gazing into the center of a flower. It makes me want to scream.

Meanwhile, the Clermont Lounge’s marquee reads:

Soup of the day - Champagne.

One day, I will take a man to the Clermont during quiet hours. Together, we’ll contemplate the veins and wrinkles of the many aged-out-of-the-sex-industry women and their bodies, with all of the awe and respect reserved for sacred rivers. We’ll lose it over how perfect they all are, falling to our knees and weeping. We’ll order the soup of the day, for everyone.

Then, he’ll sit down on his laptop, put on his dorky glasses, the ones I passionately whip off of his face every perfect time we make love, and perfectly max out the Roth IRA of every single woman there for the year.

We can do this on our one-year anniversary, too.

And every anniversary after that.

In my world, the one which is already perfect, I become the woman who can do that, herself.

And love whichever souls I love, whichever tax bracket or socioeconomic, desacralized, airless little fucking status-box they happen to find themselves in, oppressed by substanceless projections, stifled by their own farts of criticism and judgement.

I walked past my neighbor today, on his beer-bottle littered porch. His soup of the day is beer. He is hungrily sucking down yet another joint, next to his Lego replica of a white orchid, just like the real ones I used to grow. They are the sacred flower of Mother Mary.

This man cleans up like a perfect, scrubbed, beatific angel when his girlfriend is either 1. about to be here or 2. here. And when she is gone, he turns into a perfect, spliff-sucking, drunken, self-pitying goblin. For some reason (I think he is very, very drunk) he apologizes to me for looking like a bum.

“I’m sorry for looking like a bum.” are his exact spoken words, his head bowed in shame, his skinny body hunched over in a heart-protecting, spliff-sucking, defeat.

“Everyone is perfect exactly as they are.” are my exact spoken words. And I really meant it. I myself have two modes. Goddess, or goblin. There is no grey area.

Spliff-sucking goblin man, you’re absolutely perfect.

In any case, it is repeated thought and behavior, rather than appearance or status, that makes a bum. I keep that tea for myself, though. And for my refined, sophisticated readers, who likely already know this. All of whom are also perfect.

In breaking news, I’m finally learning to properly channel my ever-present anger and sense of victimization into criticism, and an obsession with perfection. I’m glad I finally caught onto this societal trend. If I must do this to fit in and survive in this perfect world, then I choose to do it with intention.

I’ve started by unleashing my angry projections upon my elderly dog.

I’ve learned it’s best to take out one’s anger on the vulnerable, who cannot fight back, and can only wag their tails and agree while internalizing your projections. So, shaking my head, I berate him for being perfect every chance I get. An absolute furred prince of a dog. Who does he even think he is? So perfectly chunky, old, and cute. He smiles at me, like he’s never going to change his ways.

I grow even more frustrated, and my admonishments and insistence that he change gathers intensity. He better change. How dare any of us, much less an animal, be so immaculate? It really needs to end or AT LEAST subside a bit.

He wags his tail, and smiles at me some more. Maddeningly, he doesn’t stop being the most wonderful dog in the world….in fact, he just gets MORE perfect. This is clearly a hopeless case. There’s nothing I can do.

Once I’m done forcing the vulnerable to bear the weight of my projections, my next choice of victim becomes clear.

I look in the mirror, and find no shortage of perfections to utterly cast into the dark pit of shame. How could I walk around, even knowing I look so perfect? And at this age? How could I be such an utterly perfect age? WHY is my skin so beautifully soft? Why is my perfect hair this gorgeous, perfect color? How dare I make my perfect writing and art, share it with the world in increasingly meaningful and beautiful ways, and teach my classes like I’m some kind of incredible, heart-centered, beautiful, interesting, perfect, valuable human, who knows her worth and chooses herself over fear every day? It’s absolutely beyond absurd.

It really should stop.

I couldn’t change my dog, who doesn’t seem to have any interest in changing, but at least I can change.

I decide to dial the light of my perfection down, once and for all. Enough is enough. It’s too much, too perfect for the world. What if ‘they’ see me deeply embracing and knowing my own perfection, and have feelings about it?

It is deeply unfair, to have come here this perfect, to have lived such a ridiculously perfect life, full of perfect occurrences. Victimized, again. My blood boils, and I have to look away from the mirror.

But, I am too beautiful. So I look back again.

Still a perfect vision of shining feminine light, STILL embodying the force which creates worlds.

It’s like nothing ever changes. Maybe if I just give it some time?

I wait, and wait, and wait for the day I am less perfect than the day I was born. I wait forever for the perfection of my being to end, only to find I am powerless, again.

So, I turn my face out to the world, now. Who is next? Surely there is SOMEONE or SOMETHING I can finally guilt, shame, or otherwise convince to be less perfectly, immaculately, divinely themselves.

Women dying in the streets? Stop being a holy, meaningful vision of beauty, I pray to them. Stop making me feel, and be moved to tears, empathy, and tenderness. How dare you be so striking and meaningful? The women blink slowly at me, their gentle eyes full of starlight. They don’t do anything to change. Their perfection is far beyond the help of me, or any person or coalition.

I know….men with an abundance of material resources who don’t use them to make life even more perfect. They should be easy, a very easy and socially acceptable target! I focus all of the hatred in my gallbladder upon them and scream, YOU! STOP!

Stop being such perfect, entitled, immaculate little Earth princes, so perfect and poised and materially secure.

I plead and pray and scream before them, writhing. STOP. STOP being so handsome, good at business, well-dressed, and making me hope for even more perfection, PLEASE CEASE making me want to see you actually connected to your heart and meaningfully contributing to building beautiful things. You’re too much. Too. Much. They shrug. They’re busy Doing Perfect Things. They don’t stop. They just keep holding Earthly and material power. Typical. I need a weaker victim.

Dejected, I settle for men pathetically sucking little spliffs on porches. They should be easy to knock over and rip apart with my sharp edges and criticisms, perfectly ungrounded, malnourished, already swaying in the wind like skinny little trees with roots fed on cheap liquor and self-hatred. THEN, they open their mouths to apologize, and I cannot help but let out an involuntary scream. PLEASE STOP IT. Just stop. Tears roll down my cheeks. I NEVER gave you permission to inspire me to empathy and self-reflection. There is way too much perfection in your vulnerability and tender, sensitive desire for purpose. You have to dial it down right now. Go back inside. I am sobbing, now. All of my efforts at projecting imperfection have proved fruitless. I am tired.

Maybe I need to focus on an entity, instead. That seems to work for a lot of people.

I flip through my perfect cellular device, through my endless lists of evil entities ruling the world. My perfectly manicured index finger lands on a popular choice: Some mysterious, shadowy conceptual cabal orchestrating all the things which many people judge to be imperfect in this world, and yet feel no power to change. Ah, yes.

Vague, amorphous, RIPE FOR PROJECTION! This is it. Perfect, perfect, perfect. FINALLY, some relief from being overwhelmed and actually completely ravished by the utter of this shameless, unapologetic perfection of existence, every time I dare to open my eyes.

I see them all at their round table, and a perfect disappointment grips my guts, eviscerates my judgement. They are all so hideously, preciously perfect in their spreadsheets, rocket ships, pipelines, various sexual misconducts, and wicked agendas to stifle love and truth, that I am undone. Undone. My eyes are pleading with them, with that vast, unfathomable, mysterious power their archetypes embody, but still they sit. Perfect like statues, in their perfect world of numbers and screens. If they don’t stop their many ongoing, nefarious perfections, which are utterly perfectly shifting the face of existence and the Earth as we know it, I don’t know what I’ll feel next

But I do know it will also be perfect.

When are things finally going to change in my world? When will the people in this world finally STOP [being so perfect] and recognize that we live in an absolute bliss of perfection where absolutely nothing is missing?

These people, this entire world, really needs to stop before I totally lose it, and melt into bliss entirely.

People are offended by the world’s many perceived imperfections, but I don’t see enough people shocked and incensed by how disgustingly, insanely perfect it all is. Well, they really should be. In my perfect opinion, we would be deeply neglecting their social duty on this planet if we were not moved to deep reproach, by the utter perfection of this one precious existence. Which would just makes us even more terribly perfect. Ugh. Since I am perfect, I am leaning fully into this duty. Consider this blog a PSA.

I mean, have you actually ever even LOOKED into the symmetrical center of a flower, with your actual eyes? Get out of here right now and go do that.

That will really stir your blood, and give you something to be outraged by. While you’re at it, start berating yourself and the people you love for being too perfect.

Increasingly pressure yourself, them, and the world to be less perfect, before you absolutely lose your mind.

That is my perfect advice for you. I am not a professional.

Love you!

XO,

Natalia.

I create for me. But it is for you, that I learn & re-learn, again and again and again, how to give.

And, of course, for the one I will now call the cosmic woman.

She belongs on this blog, because she is me. Her day, also my day.

There she was again, the other day

Slumped over her wheelchair, in the early beginnings of the day’s blistering heat.

The first time I pass her, I leave her water. The second time I see her, I bring her her sandwich. She looks up at me. Her eyes are filled with green goo, and her voice is very weak. Her orange pants are halfway down her ass, and her voluminous stomach lays softly on her thighs. She is a sea creature, displaced from her oceanic home. She is a star returning to the void. She is a woman, curled in on herself in pain, like a spiral.

I don’t feel like my sandwich is going to help her. I try to leave again, but I can’t. I bring her a cup of ice. I don’t feel like my cup of ice is going to help her. She seems to desire something I cannot fathom how to give her.

I wonder if she’s dying.

The cosmic woman may leave her body from time to time, but never dies.

I ask her what she needs, but nothing she says sounds coherent. At least, none of it is making any sense to me.

She says she needs change.

I ask her if she needs money, and she says no.

Maybe she needs to change her clothes.

Maybe she needs to change forms.

Maybe she needs to change worlds.

Maybe she will settle for nothing less than full societal erotic reform.

I contemplate bringing her a flower.

Clearly we’re in the underworld again today. Sometimes, it’s just like that. My heart feels, when I look at the mirror of her, the illusory sense that something is very wrong in my world. All the men are tight and on edge in the street, today. I wonder if they look at her and see their mother, like I do.

At the same time, in the ecosystem of indifference and delusional ideas of saving that which is indestructible and eternal, I feel like my best intentions for her may be interfering with nature and god.

I have a vision of wrapping my polished fingers around her wheelchair and taking her wherever she would like to go. But I can’t understand her slurred speech. And maybe there is nowhere to go. Maybe I just desperately want to escape from the dying part of myself, that I see in her curled-in form..

So, I leave her there, slumped over, everyone walking around her like so many busy ants.

I swallow helplessness and chase it with hope. My mind plays the trick of re-casting her in clean, lovely clothes. In a beautiful air conditioned house, smiling, with fresh flowers. A radiant smile on her face. Loved.

Would she even want that?

My tears have built an energetic moat around me. Helplessness and apathy are among the guests I refuse to let in any longer. I leave her in the sun.

I wrap my polished fingers around the wheel of my own vehicle. I drive to the silent, empty bliss of the air-conditioned poetry studio, the one with bottomless coffee and fig bars. The one full of love poems. Pain poems. Poison poems. Truth poems. The one where I tinker with words for hours.

If I can’t know what she wants, if I don’t yet have the patience, or the time, or the capacity to discern and offer it, then I’m going to make damn well sure that I know exactly what I want.

And get it.

Maybe then I’ll be able to hear her voice more clearly, and act more readily.

Scrawl, scrawl, scrawl away. I write all of my desires in cursive, purple ink. I am like the woman, curled in on myself. Like a sea creature out of water. Doing the work of making the terribly thirsty language of my desire, coherent.

What I desire is a world where she tells the world exactly what she wants, and gets it.

I also desire the impossible. I refuse to stop desiring, until I get it.

While I’m deep in my desire practice, a man in the studio makes a whole affair out of rescuing a bug, and letting it out the door.

I try to accept this as evidence of masculine compassion in my field, but what about all of the men I saw walking right around her this morning, looking down, faces tight, looking away, and saying nothing? I know some of them had more than a gift card.

Maybe their empty eyes were the best they could do in that moment, for someone who could do nothing for them.

And maybe the bug was his best effort, today, in the face of his own dark cosmic woman’s incoherent voice.

In any case, this act of gallantry on behalf of the insect kingdom moves laughter out of my lips. It’s like the entire world burning, and someone dropping a single tear on it.

I (still) feel volcanic anger when I think of men. I wish I didn’t, and I deeply accept that I do. At least I am wise enough to know that the only thing I’m feeling when I allow hate to cross the membrane of my body into my mind, is my own rigidity and pain.

To cast oneself in the part of saving the world is a dangerous game. To cast another as a villain, even more dangerous. Everyone you say you hate, is your perfect twin. We are fortunate to save ourselves and be saved, from our own delusional hatred.

My grandmother from Slovakia is calling on video chat. I show her the studio, I show her my smiling face in the sun, I show her my pearls, and I don’t tell her about the dark woman slumped like a black sun in the heat on the corner.

My grandmother has already felt her heart break enough, after a life of looking at many different versions of this woman.

Instead, I show my grandmother the lingerie and pleasure shop next door.

She giggles. Most grandmothers know a thing or two about pleasure.

I wink, and tell her I’m not going to show her any of the things in the back. In lieu of the desire to be a person, objectified………many women have chosen, instead, to personify objects.

In the street on video-chat, I tell my grandmother my biggest dream. Telling a grandmother your biggest dream is the surest, fastest route to fulfillment.

My biggest dream is that all women should have peace, and the material freedom to explore and heal this beautiful Earth to our heart’s delight, creating new worlds in spaciousness and pleasure.

My grandmother blesses my wish. I know it is coming true.

The next time I see the cosmic woman in any of her disguises, I will make a greater effort to understand and give to her. Reader, do this and we will soon have a new world.

I will take the way she moves me into the depths of my heart, even if the whirlpool she invokes in me isn’t what I might consider a ‘good’ feeling.

Even if the feeling is soaked in longing, cuts my spirit on the jagged edges of the abandoned rubble of rage and helplessness, even if the interior space I travel to get to her is all jagged wave, and deep uncertainty.

At least I feel.

We’re made to be moved by an ocean we can’t control. We’re made to vulnerably journey in ways which strip from us all certainty of destination.

Let this be the lifetime where we decline either to to settle into apathy and complaint, or to implode into the black hole of shame.

Let this be the lifetime where we swallow the starlight of our desire, whole……and allow it to deeply change us.

The sharks we fear, all only dwell in the shallows of our mind.

Until next time!

XO, Natalia.

Whatever I feel in the body, I can’t help but see, all around me on a macro scale. Since deepening Yin practice, I have also been noticing feminine energy, on a much deeper level.

Imagine feeling all of the waters of your body move as one.

The practice can’t help but bring out my deepest idealism: I imagine all the people moving as one.

All of the people, nourished and feeling absolutely loved, soft, and complete.

Yoga is an erotic reformation. I feel this truth most when I’m forced to challenge and thoughtfully rework the myths of what my being can and can’t, should and shouldn’t feel, look like, be, or do. Any myth unquestioned becomes dogma. A particularly unfortunate dogma becomes angry, grows teeth, snarls.

My yoga translates directly into my lived experience, where I cannot help but increasingly question all of my myths.

Particularly, the myth of needing to rely on _____ for survival.

For me, more than anything or anyone else, this blank is currently populated almost entirely, by the being I call The Man in My Mind.

He stresses me out. He can’t let go. He is so full of fear, abuse, dishonesty, criticism, and manipulation, that he cannot help but pass it around. He creates poverty and lack, through his terror of giving. He demands my attention every waking moment, and gives nothing of substance that I can discern. In my story, he is the toad.

In the world I’m building around myself, stressing a woman out in any way is a capital offense, remediable only by extensive time spent in quiet contemplation (preferably in a lush, beautiful garden) re-building and re-prioritizing the Yin essence.

I have the Man in My Mind do this often. It seems to be the only thing which helps. That, and breathwork. That, and writing. That, and avoiding stimulants.

I’ve also decided that in my world, seeing a woman stressed out and stretched thin, and not helping her in some way, energetically or materially, is a misdemeanor, at least. Remediable only by feeling the center of my own being, and moving from it. This deeply humiliates The Man in My Mind sometimes. It also saves my life.

I believe that rule-by-guilt, aside from being incredibly annoying and disempowering, is the very least effective leadership strategy there is. So I won’t guilt The Man. Still, I wish I betrayed myself and others less frequently, and averted my eyes much less reflexively from people suffering.

I long deeply to give, until the giving feels like receiving.

Anyways, I digress. Bringing it back to my topic: Have you ever eaten a hamburger so perfectly juicy, that you wished to share the experience with everyone on this planet who had both the desire and the teeth to partake?

I’m standing in line on a very hot day, to eat the most coveted hamburger in my neighborhood. Someone in the world loves me deeply, and gave me a gift card to eat there for weeks, for my birthday. Every time I scan the barcode, I remember that love is real. That it’s possible to give and receive through pleasure, rather than obligation, manipulation, or fear. I need that reminder in this life, much more than many people seem to.

An elderly black woman in a wheelchair, with a crown painted on her T-shirt, is gazing at the long line of people waiting outside the bakery. When I walk, I always see her, and she always sees me.

I build an energy bubble around myself, to keep from feeling invaded by all the bodies and eyes and energies of people in line. I feel good to let my eyes linger on her, though. I see her gentle eyes and I smile at her. When she sees me looking at her, specifically her, her face lights up as though she has been chosen.

She motions her hands, as if to ask “me?”. I soften my smile.

Yes, you. It suddenly makes me oddly very angry, that she is sitting there in such a state. Waiting in such squalor, so thrilled to be chosen by some random person. Rage bubbles up inside me. The Man in my mind is furious that any woman would ever be in such a position. He wants to get out of the line and scream at everyone in it. I look away.

I decide (rather, my heart decides) in that moment, to buy her a hamburger. The moment my heart decides, is the very same moment my mind, begins to voice its full, angry, vehement resistance.

I can’t and won’t criticize my own mind.

“To criticize the toad, is to validate the toad”, a deeply charming bumper sticker read tonight, a message from god on my moonlit walk. It had a cute little toad on it. I couldn’t help but burst into laughter, and find it deeply relevant.

A little bit of research told me this is a saying in behavioral psychology. It’s used to describe our own reactions, to our own maladaptive behaviors. I suppose it can certainly apply to people and circumstances, as well.

My heart (every heart?) is beautiful, and full of the holiest, purest water.

And my mind (every mind?) can be the most fearful miser there is. Miserly with love, miserly with energy, miserly with attention, miserly with care, and especially, especially, especially…….miserly with resources. It’s not a criticism. It’s simply an observation.

I don’t know why it’s like this. I just want this particular toad to change, and perhaps that is he problem. Maybe I should just let it sit, glistening in the moonlight, allowing it to do what it is that toads do. Croak, glisten, eat, metabolize, and, eventually, die.

On this lovely Sunday afternoon, I have had the notion of giving a homeless woman a hamburger, and The Man in my mind, my beautiful, starving little toad, is very, very upset. This is what he says to me.

“My resources are very limited. I don’t even know what I’ll eat next week. Besides, what if she has no teeth and can’t even eat a hamburger? What if she hates hamburgers? The men on the street all call her ‘ The Headache’. There must be a reason. What if she attacks me, for trying to feed her? She’ll probably just ask for five more hamburgers and get mad when I refuse, like the last woman. What if she’s too crazy to even eat it? $15 dollars wasted. And anyway, I am only eating at this bakery because someone has decided they love me enough to momentarily feed me. This could change at any time, because love, like resources, are ever in finite supply. That could so easily be me, sitting in a cloud of urine and trash, waiting to be chosen. Maybe it will be one day, if I keep trying to give things away for free. Maybe even next week. Maybe it already is.”

I catch myself thinking these things.

I’d kill The Man if I could, but he is so deeply inside of me, so deeply me, so flawed and complex and beautiful, that it would absolutely shatter my heart to harm him in any way.

By the time I get to the front of the line, I have managed to shut him up enough to say, two hamburgers, please. And a blueberry muffin, to stuff in The Man’s mouth like a ball gag, please. He has a thing for blueberry muffins.

I walk outside, ready to give my gift of love, courageously wrested from the fear-wrung, controlling hands of The Man. But she is gone.

Perfect, The Man in my mind says, relaxing back into complacency, with a contented sigh. Now, we have two hamburgers. One for now, and one for later. And even a muffin. And I don’t even have to worry about interacting with that woman. I win, again.

The Man in my mind loves to feel like he has won. He thinks he loves it more than love, itself.

The Man inside. The one I can’t just block, ignore, insult, or ball-gag out of my experience. The one I can’t stop from touching me. The one inside my skin.

I look across the street. Is that her?

The right side of me starts to make a beeline for my car, ready to mainline this blueberry muffin, freebase this burger, and forget all about that woman.

If she’d really wanted the hamburger, she would’ve stuck around and waited, The Man snarls. He’s always the most vicious just when he believes he’s about to get his way.

The left side of me, lighter and shaking his voice off like sticky cobwebs, chooses, instead, to cross the crosswalk.

I walk up right beside her bench, and she is pouring water on something on the ground, trying to clean it. Whatever she is doing looks like nonsensical hobo hoodoo, The Man judges, triumphantly affirmed in his case against her. He clutches the white paper bag closer, but it is too late.

A field has formed between our bodies. Me, her, The Man under my skin. The field feels soft, like we’re together in a soft, cool pink cloud, a momentary respite from the heat.

I softly say hello ma’am, and she looks up. Her energy, when she looks at me, is calm and very slow. She looks so tired, but her eyes are wide awake. They are so open and coherent, like the centers of flowers. Her eyes are hiding nothing. I have so many questions for her. I let them all collect into one. I show her the white bag, and ask her if she likes hamburgers. She says yes.

She doesn’t look crazy at all. No crazier than me, at least. She looks fully capable of receiving and eating a hamburger, despite The Man’s many misgivings. Her energy feels almost unbearably porous and soft.

I give her the bag. A very simple transaction.

Her voice says a very simple Thank you, darling. The water in my heart begins to overflow out of my eyes again. Not because I’m a ‘good’ person. But because so much of me still falls short. Still, if we are using awareness and action as a metric, love has won.

Women are the demographic which has given most to me, in this life, and shown me the most unconditional compassion, patience, and care. They are the demographic I feel the very least resistance about giving to. And, it still feels a bit like pulling out my own teeth. How absolutely wild.

Why is there so much resistance inside of me, to the pleasure of giving? Why is there so much of this resistance, inside almost all of us? Why do we hold so much criticism for the notion of greed, when criticism only feeds the toad? This particular collective toad has been validated a lot, already. The toad has been fed. It is massive, look at it. And look at us. How do we stop?

The mind says all kinds of strange, incredibly rude things. If anyone else’s mind is like mine, it is filled with all manner of singing toads. I’m grateful that I have tools to listen deeper, now.

When I listen deeper, I hear my heart, which is beyond words. My heart’s only language is generosity, in both giving, and receiving. My heart’s only language is magnetism.

My heart, if it had words, would say: Give it all to me.

All of the love, the desire, the yearning, the vulnerability, the rage, the hate, the violence, the indifference, the fear, the truth, the lies, the hamburgers, the painful reluctance to give the hamburgers.

Let me turn it all into something beautiful.

Until next time!

XO, Natalia.

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