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#haiku: When People Show You Who They Are, Believe Them
Don’t cry, argue: Waste hope on Bad actors. Copy; Collect Keep Publish The Path – Goals – Do you dream of paths diverging in a yellow wood? Checklists? Maps? Are you talking to yourself as you follow your routine? What IS your routine? How has your routine evolved? What efforts have you made to change it to newly perceived needs and discoveries? Or is your routine formed outside you, for the benefit of others?
If You Have No Goal, Any Path Will Take You There – But you won’t like where you end up. Besides, you DO have a goal, (at least one) especially since that last epiphany. Sometimes it’s something as simple as “stopping the pain” or “staying healthy.” As you become more adept at change, you realize dividing effort into “steps” to achieve a goal is critical. Take weight loss: the intimidating goal of losing 50 pounds. That won’t happen fast. Your conscious, subconscious, unconscious and collective unconscious (not to mention your pre-conscious!) are going to kick up a helluva fuss. YOU WILL CHANGE. That’s guaranteed. Studying the history of human weight loss attempts if you are not ready for the psychic pushback your body will actually double down and accelerate its weight gain. The same thing happens with alcoholism and drug addiction – trying to “control “ it often drives the supplicant deeper into their disease in a panicked reaction to the “loss” of supply. Challenge – But you can be ready. This is nothing more than the sore-muscled athlete, Day 2, thinking, I CAN’T DO THIS. Guess what? EVERYBODY THINKS THAT! Expect it! You treat yourself with loving compassion and cold compresses, hot baths and massage. In other words, there is an established map, a way to GETH THROUGH THIS. The challenge is to apply such a map to yourself, and then TAILOR and CUSTOMIZE it to your goals. Danger – Don’t go it alone. A side effect of “lessening supply” is “crazy thinking.” You will hear yourself say things like, “Nobody cares about me so I’ll just drink myself to death” Or “I WANT TO DISAPPEAR INTO THIS VAT OF ICE CREAM.” We all need somebody to talk us off the ledge, somebody who is familiar with not just our goals but what we are going through. Your id is holding the rest of you hostage, and you need an experienced hostage negotiator. So, don’t try making it through this crisis without a buddy AND a coach. AA has an acronym – HALT representing: Hungry Angry Lonely Tired These are the emotion states in which you make Bad Decisions. So when you see this condition developing – Halt. Call your hostage negotiator immediately. Opportunity – You will change. That’s the guarantee! You can’t go back to your old self. We can’t dip our fingers in the same river twice, and it turns out all addictions are an attempt to honor a past golden moment that can never, by definition, return. But you know what’s more interesting? Figuring out what that golden moment was, how it was caused, what it represents, and where the emotion you treasured is in your present life. And if it’ not there, how to get it. Trust me, there’s a world of love out there. If in doubt, see the movie UP. Now watch it again. Meditation – #Haiku: Goals Courage is Constant map redesign: Looking backward Planning forward The Rose – Vulnerability – Do you have nightmares? Are you helpless in your dreams? Do you dream of children, of your own childhood? In DreamTarot, the rose represents the soft evanescence of youth when the merest thumbprint of emphasis leaves an eternal impression. As the emblem of beauty, the Rose warns us that this quivering, temporary vulnerability may be the very definition of loveliness.
We Remember – You well recollect how you were molded. Is it a pleasant nostalgic vision or a horror story? Do you resent all the other actors in this drama? Remember, resentment I a poison we consume – we are the only ones it harms. Challenge – Can you turn the building blocks of your own past into a constructive, hopeful framework for the future? Can you mentally accept and explore the beauty of maturity? Danger – The philosophy of “ruin” Is a psychic snare. Terrible things happen to ordinary people and they are changed forever. We may wish those things hadn’t happened but regret prevent us from focusing on reality. We need to understand the world we’re in and map it for those who follow after. History and literature explore the coping mechanisms around disaster and the strong people it produces. Opportunity – Resilience is the art we cultivate. We soon realize resilience has its own beauty; this rose may be cut down but the plant is hardly dead, in fact it offers an outpouring of constant roses. That Is true beauty. Meditation - #Haiku: Vulnerability Hardening’s spontaneous & painful; Softening’s practiced; & free. The Tulip – Illusion – Do you dream about magic dissolution of “the rules”?
The problem with mirages – especially those we long to believe in – is that they become illusions. We need to cling to an obvious fantasy so hard we willingly surrender our ability to discern fact from fiction. Illusions are Powerful – The seventeenth century Dutch needed a desirable luxury exchange item the privileged could trade back and forth for status reasons. Yes, that was the tulip bulb. It was a bubble – the bottom fell out and left a whole lot of previously comfortable people bankrupt. We don’t have anything like that, these days, do we? Or do we? Challenge – Are you trapped by an illusion that you used to need but now is killing you? You can identify this by your increasing suffering over your increasingly difficult life and your diminishing pleasure over something that used to be a reliable joy. Is it as relationship? An activity? A belief? Look at the problem honestly. Find others going through the same experience and have an honest discussion about it. If any group member rushes in defensively to shame and discourage you, to convince you you’re not feeling what you KNOW you ARE then what you’re trying to exit is a cult. Stop communicating with those flying monkeys and find somebody who supports the truth of your actual suffering AND your desire to feel better. Danger – The path to re-making yourself is fraught with danger and you will require all sorts of help. Don’t be discouraged if your feelings are volatile and transitory and you are confused about their reality. Move slowly, consulting kind others with whom you feel safe. Opportunity – You are embarked on an exciting growth challenge where you leave a constricting carapace behind. Sometimes the “shell” was protective and served for a time to keep you safe while you matured. You don’t need to disparage the old you, or the old relationship; it served its purpose. Often people who have been through a trauma say afterwards they wouldn’t change the past, because they treasure and embrace the person they’ve become. Meditation - #Haiku: Schism In the multiverse Heartbreak is Mitosis to create Extra selves |
AuthorAlysse Aallyn is the author of four well-received thrillers, Find Courtney, Depraved Heart, Woman Into Wolf and I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, one historical novel (Devlyn) and a book of short stories (Awake Till the End.) She has three published books of poetry – The Sacred Quiver, The Hot Skinand The Five Wounds and edited another (The Feathered Violin.) She trained in theatre at Circle in the Square Theatre School and Martha Graham School of Dance. She appeared in the part of Isabella in Jean Giraudoux’s The Enchanted at the New Yorker Theatre. She has held writing fellowships at Brooklyn College and LaSalle University. Her novel Depraved Heart won a 2011 CT Press Club fiction award and her play Queen of Swords was a semi-finalist in the 2014 National Arts Council First Play award. She has been invited to read her original work at The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC and has taught creative writing at Catonsville Community College. Woman Into Wolf was a semi-finalist for The National Playwrights Conference (2016) and her play Our Father’s Restaurant was performed on Pacifica Radio. She has also appeared as a crime commentator on ID - TV’s Blood Relatives. Her play, Let’s Speak Vietnamese was published in Dramatika Magazine. She directed The Maids for Theatre Upstairs in Columbia, Maryland. Other plays she’s written are The Honey & the Pang about Emily Dickinson’s posthumous career, Cuck’d– a modern Othello, and Caving, in which the theatre is transformed into a cave for a spelunking dare. Rough Sleep, (based on her novel I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead) was produced by Manhattan Repertory Theatre (W. 45thSt) in 2019. Her latest play, The Dalingridge Horror, (short version Leonard & Virginia) explores the partnership between Leonard & Virginia Woolf in their own words and was a finalist for the Tennessee Williams 2021 award. Her newest poetry collection, Haunted Wedding will be appearing in 2022 from Thriller Library. Archives
October 2022
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