Third Person Dreams

Quote of the Day: 

You have to believe that love will be there when you need it. 

~Claire Danes~ 

Current Local Weather: 

 Snow. Slate-Cleansing snow.

Currently on my iPod: 

"What Might Have Been"
Little Texas

Dear Friends, Family and My Family of Friends...

I love the anticipation of a good snow storm. 

Growing up in GA meant I had an unusual sense of the awesomeness known as snow. While growing up it didn't take much. The mere thought of snow meant we (my generation and younger) began, almost immediately, to hold out for our biggest hope of all hopes that school would cease to exist. It's not that we didn't care about learning or bettering ourselves, it was because flaky white goodness was the end all be all of seasonal rewards. We could stay up late and watch HBO, we didn't have to study! We could sleep in! Or better yet we could go into the ice, dressed in our once a year winter jacket and learn the ups and downs of frostbite. 

Snow days ranked up there with waiting for Jesus/Guffman or the next Zombie Apocalypse. It just HAS to happen, right? 

Snow is THE Jabberwocky of all things weather related in the South. It HAS to be real, right? 

Just because we lived in the South didn't mean we didn't deserve days off of school for snow! But they were rare, hardly seen, hardly felt, feared by the adults and loved by kids. Snow...ah, the snow. The silent beauty.

Ah...memories...I'm reminded, while keeping one eye anxiously on the window, two ears plugged into Fleetwood Mac and my fingers moving to spin a yarn for you all, of those days and those third person dreams. Dreams of this type tend to appear as crazy or unfounded by those that believe dreaming is frivolous and hard work is the only bedfellow a person should have. I suppose those of us that do dream need to hold tight to our third person dreams for those that don't. It's our duty. There are those of us that weren't born to dream, we were born dreaming. Of course we lose our way and forget how we got where we are. Reminders of this life are sometimes blind, blunt and bewildering. This is when we must allow our peers to hold their third person dreams out there for us to borrow, enhance and send back for the next. 

This isn't always easy. As I get older and the snow storms become more of an expected nuisance, dreaming of a clean white slate of a day seems frivolous and boring, a waste of space in my mind. But it isn't. If we're not careful, as adults, we will soon be left with only a reflection of ourselves in those snow covered hills. By the time this happens we honestly risk our lives staring at that snow-covered hill. We will have forgotten to play in the snow and become a paranoid of avalanches, dreamless person.

I love the Fleetwood Mac song,  

Landslide.  

***And the link is to the best version out there.***

And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills 

until the landslide brought me down...

oh mirror in the sky, what is love..

can the child within my heart, rise above.

Can I sail through the changing ocean tide, 

can I handle the seasons of my life...

Well, I've been afraid of changing, cause I built my life around you.

But time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I'm getting older too.

Oh I'm getting older too...so... 

Take this love, take it down. 

If you climb a mountain and you turn around. 

and if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills

well the landslide will bring you down...down...

and if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills....

well maybe, the landslide will bring you down...

well, well, the landslide will bring you down.

Nothing like a good Stevie Nicks set of lyrics to bring the tears on...and you back to your dreaming self. 

So, what's the point? I have to confess. I'm amidst something I think could be great, honestly so. And no, it's not my medical crap. I've recently experienced something I'd rather keep to myself for now. It started as a hope/fear of the unknown and became this unexpected, wonderful and worrisome thing all at once. Turns out, I'm smack dab in the middle of a third person dream. Someone from an unknown constellation is lending this to me and they knew right when I needed it. This isn't my dream. It's, at least not from where I stand, always a good thing but looks like it might get there. 

It's a landslide. 

It's ok. I'll either die trying to find a safe place for myself in it or I will live to see what the land beneath it looks like. Either way, I can't complain. I don't know what I haven't seen. I don't understand what I can't hear or feel and like most, I fear all of it. The good and bad, the known and unknown. We're bred to live in a life where we address those that are part of our current known dream in the second person and find it ridiculous to live in the third and observe our lives from the outside in. Even if only for a moment. 

My third person life kinda goes like this: Cicily likes to dream in color. She finds the best people she possibly can and attaches herself to them like one of those sticky octopuses that walk on walls that she used to collect from Happy meals...She thinks Salt-Water Taffy was invented by dentists, slips in & out of conscious thought all day long and truly believes that snow is the best of all known distractions. Cicily is currently dreaming. Please don't disturb her. Just trust it will get better, just like she does.

Yours in Dreams, Drifts and Delivering a Delirious Draft,

Cicily

 

Another Day...Another...Uh...Dollar? Hell no. It's ANOTHER DAY!

Quote of the Day:

*apologies ahead of time for the length of this*

The future used to be such an abstract idea...but then it has the nerve to show up

and it's like it's expecting us to do something without 
the slightest intention of giving us a lending hand.

~Kurt...Glee~ 

Current Local Weather: 

Shit. Followed by a well-intentioned feeling of 

reluctance and sunshine...for now.

Currently on my iPod: 
*Most beautiful version available. Promise. Buy it.*

"Moonlight in Vermont"  
State of Art
Ben Williams

Dear Friends, Family and My Family of Friends, and one particular friend...

Last year, right around that horrid day known as Valentines Day, I wrote a letter more to myself and my daughters about the love I didn't need and the one I did need and one year, almost to the date...kinda, I'm finding myself writing a love note to someone who's been in my life for a while. And no, it isn't THAT kind of love note. I'm not getting hitched, or even asking for a hitched ride to nowhere'sville of love villas. This is something that is coming from the heart. And it is for one of my dearest friends. And yes, the latest episode of Glee was about that four letter word...you know...starts with an L and often ends with heartbreak...the big one..."Love"...was killer. It took care to show that love is messy, sucks ass sometimes and is often not what you thought it was or what other people had you believe it should be or could be and often, if you get it right before you die, you realize that the love you had, was often what you always wanted it to be. 

Ok, for those that know me, I will quit with the teenagey TV melocomedrama talk...enough Gleeage.


Yes this is public. But this is for all dozen or so readers to take in but not to digest in the way I am writing it. This is being written as a public declaration to someone who's name will be never-ever be mentioned...but I need to push a little. He's been down on his "A-game" and he needs a boost. I feel he's thinking he may be or very well is probably losing his coveted monopoly piece in this game of messy, often costly life and is trying desperately to win it back on Ebay...A friend. It seems like an eternity of a life has passed since I met this friend, But it's not a life I know or one I don't think I've had the privilege to live in the flesh...or at the very least, it's one I've lost the source codes for.

So, This is for you. And yes, it really is. 


Tomorrrow is always a new day. How frolickin'' cliche' of me. But just because you're roaming without or at-best, sketchy coverage, doesn't mean a thing in this modern day and age. I'm pretty sure that your smart-phone and brain is wired to change GPS coordinates with the turn of the breeze that says all the things you don't need to hear and even better those sayings come from one of those satellites that everyone knows exist but will never see.  Or maybe you will. I have the feeling that neither of us will know what that satellite looks like until we've found the flip-side. But we both know that the B-side, the flip-side as they say in the industry, is always the better one. It's the one that the musicians and artists let their true lights shine on and on and on.

And I felt a dire need to make this public, because I too, need to hear it, even after it came out of my own brain. 

But really, I have to ask, what was this "L" word invented for if not for our own edification? It's time for you to get with that program. I hear they meet 24/7, it's on every radio, every bandwidth of existence that's ever existed and is now visible on every inch of this planet. Believe it or not. But yes, Hallmark has actually found a new CEO and is busy covering the  world as we know it with an invisible cloak disguised as that taste, texture, sight and sound of love. Is it red velvet? I suppose it would be if you weren't blind or color-disabled.  

But this isn't romantic love. This is truly easy to be a part of. There's no fee to join. There's no commercial with the gorgeous Jennifer Hudson telling you how even though she looks "thinner" on the outside, she's fuller on the inside and the light she shines has always been there...This is a simple find at your local hardware store of life. They sell goggles of reality there in every size, shape and color. 

Just say the word and it changes. Life does. Love does. The greens turn to fields and the blues turn to endless sky and that azure dream you had while on the last plane you drifted to sleep on, is suddenly the color you see when you stare in the mirror and try to find the person behind the retinas that beg you, daily, for a clearer vision. 

You're a whole...beautiful soul. You have given your life to making sure that what was in front of you, that block known as your world is ok and where you are, whatever shape that takes on whatever day and time you're in, will be surefooted, heart wrenchingly meaningful, even if that meaning doesn't come to you while you're on this side of the vinyl tracks. 

And I say all of this with every single bit of life, love, blood, sweat and tears left inside me. And this doesn't just mean that I want that square foot you're standing on to smile...it is quite the opposite...I dream of a day, that you, one of my dearest friends, one who knows my head sometimes better than I, will take a look at the place that was rented out on your behalf on the very moment you entered the world...you were there...it was the day your mother and father rented you your first apartment, the one you've resided in since, that spacious, high ceiling loft with the view that goes beyond that vast footage in your heart, will be repaired beyond repair, beyond your wildest dreams and the repairman won't be the one with a grayed out mullet and a crack deeper than the river of Jordan, but by that one that has your number on speed dial and a magnet on your fridge...he's the only ONE that you need. He's got an eternal resume with a reference list that goes beyond every name ever invented. You're in need of repair, minor by comparison to some, major by comparison to those watching over you. Your heart, the love it shows to everyone else watching you, will return, maybe now, maybe ten years from now, but it WILL get there...to that most beautiful, original, made just for you...your size, shape and color (and that goes for your hair too)


Yours in Love, Lightening the Load and Listening when Words Aren't Present, 

C

 

 

A Manifesto of Sorts

Quote of the Day:
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability
to choose one thought over another.
~William James~

Current Local Weather:
Overcast but finally,
albeit after too long of a time,
hopeful for health.

Currently on my iPod:
"Takin It To the Streets"
Taylor Hicks
Do I Make You Proud

Dear Friends, Family and my Family of Friends,

I sat down at about 4am yesterday morning and wrote a letter to a friend, but really it was more for myself (yeah, yeah. narcissism...whatever) . I woke up and was extremely bothered by where I was, and not in reality (well, that would be a lie and you'll see why in the following post), but in my soul. I just HAD to get it out of me and I wasn't going to even attempt to give in to the sleep fairies hovering around my foggy glasses until it was on paper, or at the very least, electronic paper.

So, here it goes. FYI: As compared to my older posts, this post is decidedly sans kitschy photos and references to anything but the real, too-sick-to-care (both mentally and physically, and for good measure let's just add in emotionally, too) what others think of me, me.

Dear ____ (name has been changed to absolutely nothing to protect the innocent)

I guess this is going to be one of those nights where sleep teases me with fits of thought, restless writing streaks and the casual anxiety that has become commonplace in my life these days...

So, what happens when C doesn't sleep?
Someone ends up with a long letter in their inbox. Therapeutic for me, amusement for you, win-win all around.

The last month or so has lent me considerable perspective as a human being on what life means, at least in my opinion. I've been half-assed delving from time to time in the writing of my medically dramatic, not too serious memoir. But as I was laying in the bed at memorial that last afternoon, after the custody mediation, I thought to myself...why would anyone want to read shit about me?

Sure, I have a following of jazz fans, but in writing this, that's neither here nor there. I almost have to start over in my "Non-fiction book writing career" if I want to make anything of myself and in promotion of this hopeful-to-sell-before-the-second-coming kinda deal.

So I wondered and thought and thunk and kerplunked while staring at the beautiful rain, albeit cold rain, outside my window on floor 7-5 at Memorial Hospital and came up with this instead: (One of the very kind nursing assistants, a little numb in white/gray matter asked, why don't you watch TV, get your mind off things...to which I replied with a nice as I could be tone while feeling like I'm dying, I'm a writer sans pen, to get my mind off things, I decidedly place my mind on other things and write in my head for a later date...) A book about searching for life among the almost dead.

Of course my medical catastrophes will be enriched with literary license, and my critical and unfiltered potty mouth and sense of humor will also be present. But, this will largely be about my travels writing the jazz book, finding joy in cooking for dozens of people and seeing their careers blossom right in front of my eyes at the retreats and how writing and immersing myself feet first in the literary community and living through hell, has taught me to seek life among the living dead (I.e. the 9-5 cubicle, taco bell eating, pale skinned, illiterate, placated by mass media, plagued with papparazzi envy, celebrity lovin, if-it's-at-Michaels-it-MUST-be art society we're forced to live in.).

I'm so tired of professionals that live with their professionalism written on pseudo wood plaques on their little professional office desks, looking down on people like me, you and pretty much everyone in my little but loving circle of friends. As artists, we're not stupid, no matter how big or small our lives turn out to be. All art, even the bad shit, has a purpose, in turn, allowing purpose and a meaningful life to enrich the lives of those who create it.

Office professionals, salesmen, lawyers, truck drivers (a lot of them write...I could do that...drive around all day and think of things to write...) wait staff, nurses, doctors, HR administrators...they've all got potential to reach and find their purpose in life through their jobs too. However, when one allows their job to sequester them to a life where shopping at Wally World is the only activity they do and art means posters of rock bands and Debbie Gibson on their ceiling and American Idol is the only time music invades their brain, then they become, by no fault other than their own, the true outcasts of what our society should be.

Alas, this isn't the case. People like me, you...the ones that end up living under a bridge after poor sales of their first novel or book on jazz, are the outcasts in our own ways. After being told that the career that I've busted my ass on since 2006 is not a real career by a decidedly (at least in her own mind) important person in our little community known as the Springs, I felt defeated. Downtrodden. Cast among the homeless and almost-dead, invisible crowd with too much socially unacceptable hair and drool in ALL the wrong places. But I realize that this "professional" is right. I don't have a "job." Instead I took a long and winding road that is less traveled than it should be. I followed a dream and instead of it being a job (a word so deftly shared by that poor sap of a man in the bible...your friend and mine, Job) I have passion and life within me despite my situation...and this is something that shares a lion's share of hope that resides deep among my too often situational/circumstantial depression....I must...REPEAT...MUST allow this feeling to remain omnipresent in my life instead of that ho-hum complacency so many others have allowed their lives to embody.

Does this thought and subsequent thoughts that will reign upon my consciousness in the near days mean that I've fully realized my goal of becoming an arts snob? Hmmm...not so sure. But I worry. Hell, if I got paid to worry I could build adjoining cabins for all of my friends (so we never have to be too far or too close in our nonrelationships) in Telluride. These would be so grand that they'd make those celebrity dwellings look like a wanna-be architect/toddler with legos and blue prints, built them. Also, as a mother, I've learned that worrying often leads to nothing other than gray hair. (Good reminder to have my sharpie out so I can touch them up) Worry is my current major in the university of life. As a matter of fact, I'm a bonafide doctoral candidate in the subject waiting to present my dissertation any day now.

Hopefully my anxiety will allow me to graduate from worry to okay-ness with not just any life, but my life. (insert any Billy Joel song at this point in the blog and you'll have a great soundtrack)

Hopefully my imaginary paycheck forged by my worrying mind will turn into a real one. Ahhhh...one can dream, right?

So...I'm meeting with a web designer on Monday, for lunch. I've been talking with him for quite a while. Jim Lewis. (This makes the fourth, yeppers...FOURTH Jim Lewis I know.) Weird. But I spoke with him eons ago about my sites and he's never let me forget. A true salesman. He even called to check on me in the hospital. Hmmm...I hope he's not stalking me. But then again, if he is, does that make me a celebrity?

Time to put my money where my mouth is or whatever that saying is. I have friends on standby that are willing to advertise on their sites, my editorial services (1000.00/manuscript isn't unheard of, right? ...I suppose it's standard fare for someone of my stature...lol...in the literary community) and query writing services.

I'm going to fight for what I believe to be a real dream, not what anyone could quite call...a hobby. And also, fight to move up the ladder, more aggressively so, than the past. I had been quite aggressive (believe it or not) until my ass found a new home at Memorial during my preggo days w/ Miss Natty Poo. I'm going to break this ridiculous cycle of dependence/neediness/circumstantial everything that is so fucking far from my actual character that I don't even recognize who I am most days.

I suppose writing this book will help.

Writing letters like this certainly does and is more to my chagrin than yours, I'm sure.

On that note, Natty Poo is awake and in need of a bottle and changing. Ta-Ta my dearest reader...or two.

Yours in Manifestos, Magic Cups and Mostly Memorable Mommy Moments,

Cicily

The Infamous Kissing Cousins: Regret and Guilt

Quote of the Day:

One's real life is often the life
that one does not lead.
~Oscar Wilde~

Current Local Weather:
Latent heat followed by gusto amounts of electrical activity
near the intersections of regret, shame and guilt.

Currently on my iPod:
Innocent Bones
"The Shepherd's Dog"
Bryan Sutton

Dear Friends, Family and My Family of Friends,

They say, whoever they are, that regret is the worst enemy any one person can have in their lives. Worse than Hitler, worse than that Hussein dude and worse than its counterpart, guilt. I think some people truly think regret and guilt are kissing cousins, but they're not.


Wikipedia (if it's on there it must be true, right?) defines Guilt as:
...the fact of being responsible for the commission of an offense.^[1] It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes—accurately or not—that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation.^[2] It is closely related to the concept of remorse.

Nowhere in this definition of GUILT, does it talk about regret.

However...REGRET is defined as:

...a negative conscious and emotional reaction to personal past acts and behaviors. Regret is often expressed by the term "sorry." Regret is often felt when someone feels sadness, shame, embarrassment, depression, annoyance or guilt after committing an action or actions that the person later wishes that s/he had not done or having not committed an action or actions that the person later wishes that s/he had done. Regret is distinct from guilt, which is a deeply emotional form of regret — one which may be difficult to comprehend in an objective or conceptual way. In this regard, the concept of regret is subordinate to guilt in terms of its emotional intensity.

Yet in the definition of REGRET, GUILT is mentioned. And not only is guilt mentioned, it's mentioned as a deeper form of regret than regret itself. Hmmm....

Question is: do you have to feel regret for the things you're guilty of?

Answer? I don't think so. For those of you who personally know me, you know I've been through an admitted amount of hell and back over the last few years. But I have survived it all. At least thus far, right? Tomorrow always has potential for failure and success in either mild or extreme circumstances. But they are only that...circumstances.

I was speaking with a friend this week who happens to be going through her own hell. She was lamenting on how she knew this would change her, and probably for the worst, but she was going to take it all in stride. That she had her REGRETS in everything, including her children...and felt, on top of it all, GUILTY for the issues that were solely hers but bleeding over into everyone else' lives.

I am not one to talk about having past issues or cheap knock offs of Louis Vuitton luggage sitting in my trunk...yeah, you heard me, I've got junk in my trunk...

(Tom, Meg...thanks for this lesson...)

But sometimes, even when the junk in our trunk is causing us to have to not only find, but accept, bigger britches than we're used to wearing, we must press forward knowing that a wider load isn't the end all be all of our lives. Take heed of what Tom and Meg did in that cinematic masterpiece JOE Vs. the VOLCANO...they didn't let their baggage sink them. Instead, they used it to stayed afloat and ultimately learned that sometimes staying afloat was more than a blessing, it was the key to their survival.

In my humble opinion, guilt is for those that have committed crimes and religious fanatics.


Regret, I'm afraid, is something that seems to be a part of everyone's baggage with guilt as its carryon at some point or another. But it doesn't have to own us. Coping techniques and various types of therapy can sometimes ward off these feelings when we're at our worst, but they generally aren't a long term cure. At least not an immediate one. You just can't let it own you and shape your life from here, I'm talking RIGHT NOW, on out. It has to be a "thing" in the past. Unless you've maimed another human being and/or have some brunette politicians daughter/rocker chick from the 80's in a deep well in your basement, forcing it to but lotion on its skin, let it go!



I've always thought that living with regret is something no one should have to do. Living with the feelings of guilt AND regret seem to be a self-inflicted punishment that harbors misery as its greatest asset and drug. Whatever you have done, it was meant to be done or done to you, for better or worse. I certainly have made my lion's share of mistakes over my so far short 34 years, but every one of them has made me stronger in some way or another. And that strength wasn't obvious, in any one of those lessons, at first or even at the five or ten year mark. It only became clear over time.

Am I saying this because I think I'm better than any of you? Absolutely not.

It's just too bad that as humans we take these things and let it go around in our minds, or our friend's minds, until we're practically paralyzed with the thought of whatever we did as our former selves. It's poison. This is when we need to be honeybadgers. Ya know, the crazy nastyass kind that don't give a f*** if poison is coming from their food. They just get back up and go on with their crazy ass, fearless ways. (although I highly recommend you keep your love and careful regard for your fellow man, unlike the honeybadger. But these days, it's harder to keep our perspective than it used to be. I just have a strange feeling that we're all going to be honeybadgers before we know it. We're already eating poison, intellectually speaking, on a regular basis and having to get up and move on regardless...more on that in a later blog...Thanks Walt!)



So, when you're at your worst and think that this feeling will be your closest enemy for the rest of your life, think again. Let it, instead, keep you and everyone else afloat as a lesson learned instead of a weighted participle of grief on your shoulder. Remember, it, whatever it is, could have been worse.

You are worth the world. Always.

Yours in Honeybadgers, Honing in on the Future, and Housing Feelings in their Proper Place,

Cicily

The House is Burning

Quote of the Day:
Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver.
Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.
~Richard M. Nixon~

Current Local Weather:
Rain. Yeah right.
Whatever.
Currently on my iPod:
Whataya Want From Me
Adam Lambert

Dear Friends, Family and my Family of Friends,

Have you ever sat in a house, burning up in your own skin and wondering what the problem was? Has that house been yours? More often than not, it's been mine. I sit unaware that I'm the one with the floor burning beneath my feet, sweating, stinking up the whole town and waiting for rain or wind or the apocalypse/nuclear winter to cool things down. Where is my reality? Somewhere amongst the ashes, is my guess.

Yet these days the heat outside and in, is unbearable.

I've got issues with the following: (and who doesn't...)

Bills. (They just don't stop coming in, EVER.)



Love. (It was love at first sight, every time.)



Rest. (Break? Who? What? When? Do adults get breaks?)




There are some days I wonder if becoming an addict of some sort would help. I know it wouldn't help with a damn thing, but I do know that it might help strengthen my tolerance of such widespread feelings of impending doom.

But the bigger issue is how to really solve my other issues. I try. I try my very best to figure this out daily. But instead of resolution, I listen to music, write words in an orderly manner and allow the arts community to invade the very fiber of my being. I can't live without it. It's my life, my breath, my support, my family.

I recently had a woman of incredible power (albeit short lived...hopefully) in my life tell me to get a real job. (I could smell charred flesh all around me when she started in on her lecture, as I thought of my chosen profession as just that...a profession!) Hmmm..is it hot in here or is it just me?

But it turns out, the majority of the 9-5 world doesn't consider anything having to do within the arts as work. I know. I've asked most the people in the world for their opinion. (Not most, just most of those I care to hear from) Yet without the arts, writing, painting, dancing, Glee etc...we would be trapped in a burning house, oblivious to the colors the world has to truly offer. Most folks don't give a rat's butt as to how the arts get to where they currently are (youtube vs Julliard vs American Idol) they just know that they're always there for use and abuse.

A good friend of mine by the name of Bryan Pedas recently commented on my blog that he was blissfully happy writing 8 hours a day for no money now that he quit his "real" job. Bryan writes some of the best fiction I've ever read...so I have to ask this, if there weren't Bryan's and other folks that aspire to be the Rachel Berrys and Adam Shankmans of the world, where would we be? I have the feeling that we would be lifeless drones and clones of folks like this guy:


(I will be the first one to admit that I'd never like to have the ACTUAL job or be the ACTUAL person portrayed by Steve Carrell on The Office, I will gladly take on the roll of Mr. Carrell's ACTUAL wife.)

So before you criticize and condone another person's life or their chosen artsy-fartsy occupation, ask yourself this, where would you be without them and their art? You wouldn't be reading this. You wouldn't be listening to the Warblers sing "Somewhere Only We Know" because there wouldn't even be a group known as Keane. And you most certainly wouldn't be able to laugh at your cubical hell through shows like The Office. Some of us are perfectly happy with having little to no money or helping represent those with little to no money. Deal with it. It's our life, not yours.

For the artsy fartsy folks who read this, I think you should go ahead and let the house crumble around you, all the while making sure you've got a gaggle of survival supplies waiting just in case you too are found with your feet burning.



Yours in Work, Well-Done Flesh and Waking up,

Cicily