Amy gave a reading. Set me to thinking about the people in my inner life, to whom I talk in the privacy of my mind/spirit. Something(s) have shifted in me, a subtle but pervasive shake-up. I’m thinking about the forces at work in that. Sometimes I think I have to stop and honor those forces esp if they're male because they're fewer and they are often invisible to the world as they are almost always unorthodox interpersonal choices on my part. I mean, if this is noteworthy, clearly I’m off the beaten path. Which is fine.
So. I’m stopping to honor my relationship with Scarecrow Bale D. Nobody looks at me the way he does, has ever looked at me like that except my Grandpa. (waaa I miss my grandpa letting that wash over me) Like throwing a big rock into a lake, when I hit Scarecrow’s line of sight, wakes of “YOU!” roll out of him towards me. It is simply clear and present that he believes I am a Good Thing in this world, on many levels. Because I believe the same about him, his belief sinks in rather than rolls over and leaves me cold. And that has changed me over this time, it has eroded much of my shell.
And my relationship with him has been a slow uneventful erotic awakening. It’s not been a sexual thing at all, we‘ve spent gobs of totally chaste time together, talking about the world mostly, arguing about it. But he is someone who is in large part his animal self, his sexual presence is simply palpable, and because he has no problem with his sexual footprint so to speak, he can calmly take my temperature better than I can myself and can smell on me what I can’t (yet) sense myself at all. He is keenly aware of that part of me, at work all the time in its smoldering way, even though to the world I seem some kinda a-sexual. I don’t seem a-sexual to Scarecrow, maybe more like a keg of dynamite to be tiptoed around. Over time that has changed my sense of myself too, has made me much more comfortable in my own skin and way of being, and has reoriented my view of myself as finicky, which is a much different thing than believing I have a coldness problem to solve. (His word is “modest”, which is as old-timey as canning I spose.) Between many people there is a box of erotic possibility, like they walk around and everyone they meet there’s a box there between them filled more or less with sex, and if there’s any chance of it being more than less, they are eager to open the box. There’s a Pandora’s box between me and Scarecrow. I had, even though I did not know it, poked at the box between us for years, I’d been sitting on it and dangling my legs innocent as a kid at a playground, my skirt hiked up underneath and butt warming on its glow, clueless as fuck. I drew back at first when I got a clue, but then my eyes adjusted. From the glow from that box, I could see the boxes in general between people, saw the box sitting there btw FPH and me shuffling around like maybe there’s a (runt?) puppy in it, I also saw that between me and most people there is no box at all as far as I’m concerned and I accepted that as my way of being, and much more. That’s what Scarecrow calls “Reverse Blinking”, when you think you have your eyes open and have to shut them to open them really.
Reverse Blinking, that concept alone has been as handy to me as one of those screwdrivers with all the interchangeable heads.
And there’s another thing. Also as a result of these re-viewing conversations between Scarecrow and me, I took my ex-husband to court to protect my primary custody of my kids. I didn’t think I needed to do that (another adamant statement Scarecrow was dubious of, pissing me off royally one day by accusing me of still being married, o I was so mad) because I didn’t want to need to do that because I am afraid of my ex-husband, afraid of his anger, his explosions, his spite, his capacity for ruthless self-interest. I wanted him to not notice that I had my kids so that he’d not try to take them from me. I wanted to stay off his radar by not asking for child support. I was addicted to that fear, lived with it too long to imagine otherwise, a functioning Fear-aholic. The threat itself wasn’t real. I had the legal right to the boys the whole time. X had me over a make-believe barrel. That is only beginning to sink in. I cannot remember living with no trace of fear of a man. I had managed some (a lot) of things all on my own, some money saved and this roof over my head, etc. - I mean, I had managed to clear my life of fear-reasons. But not that one. That removal has got to change my orientation to men, all of them, big time. How much attraction can you feel while simultaneously wincing? How much nagging is fed by fear, a form of panic? How much worry is really fear wearing a concern costume? How much withholding of what you really think or feel, always hiding it like contraband, can coexist with intimacy? I could go on all day with a litany of what removing fear might affect, clearing my water, no underground spill of that toxin ongoing into my system. Wow. No really, WOW. Having control over my own life so fully as this is intoxicating. It’s giving me beer goggles looking at myself.
A relationship w/ a man, for me, can be outside every box except the one between us. I know what I value, so completely sure that I’m a mountain goat on the sheer face opinion about it. My relationship w Scarecrow, that’s been important, (my mama doesn’t approve cz its too much like an affair, and my friends don’t approve cz it’s not enough like an affair but), it’s been very valuable to me.
Scarecrow doesn’t read my blog, but I’ll post a little playlist in his honor cz the man loves his Led Zeppelin. And this playlist goes double for Tbone, who brought with him a community pool pass from the 70’s that had our photo on it, him in a cut sleeved Led Zeppelin t-shirt and a big-ass mustache + mutton chops, and me about mid-thigh height at his side (in a 'disco sucks' t-shirt). This song is the only Zep tune to ever feature a guest vocalist, Plant’s only such duet in the Zep years, with a shy standoffish indie folk music girl who died in obscurity: The Battle of Evermore. Bonus track: When the Levee Breaks
O, and check this out. When I do a reading, the 10 of Wands is Scarecrow’s card cz it looks like him to me, always shouldering something. When I searched up the tunes, I remembered this album cover, remembered sitting in a beanbag around the time that pic was taken with my dad, next to his monstersized speakers, listening to music, studying that cover for hours.
So. I’m stopping to honor my relationship with Scarecrow Bale D. Nobody looks at me the way he does, has ever looked at me like that except my Grandpa. (waaa I miss my grandpa letting that wash over me) Like throwing a big rock into a lake, when I hit Scarecrow’s line of sight, wakes of “YOU!” roll out of him towards me. It is simply clear and present that he believes I am a Good Thing in this world, on many levels. Because I believe the same about him, his belief sinks in rather than rolls over and leaves me cold. And that has changed me over this time, it has eroded much of my shell.
And my relationship with him has been a slow uneventful erotic awakening. It’s not been a sexual thing at all, we‘ve spent gobs of totally chaste time together, talking about the world mostly, arguing about it. But he is someone who is in large part his animal self, his sexual presence is simply palpable, and because he has no problem with his sexual footprint so to speak, he can calmly take my temperature better than I can myself and can smell on me what I can’t (yet) sense myself at all. He is keenly aware of that part of me, at work all the time in its smoldering way, even though to the world I seem some kinda a-sexual. I don’t seem a-sexual to Scarecrow, maybe more like a keg of dynamite to be tiptoed around. Over time that has changed my sense of myself too, has made me much more comfortable in my own skin and way of being, and has reoriented my view of myself as finicky, which is a much different thing than believing I have a coldness problem to solve. (His word is “modest”, which is as old-timey as canning I spose.) Between many people there is a box of erotic possibility, like they walk around and everyone they meet there’s a box there between them filled more or less with sex, and if there’s any chance of it being more than less, they are eager to open the box. There’s a Pandora’s box between me and Scarecrow. I had, even though I did not know it, poked at the box between us for years, I’d been sitting on it and dangling my legs innocent as a kid at a playground, my skirt hiked up underneath and butt warming on its glow, clueless as fuck. I drew back at first when I got a clue, but then my eyes adjusted. From the glow from that box, I could see the boxes in general between people, saw the box sitting there btw FPH and me shuffling around like maybe there’s a (runt?) puppy in it, I also saw that between me and most people there is no box at all as far as I’m concerned and I accepted that as my way of being, and much more. That’s what Scarecrow calls “Reverse Blinking”, when you think you have your eyes open and have to shut them to open them really.
Reverse Blinking, that concept alone has been as handy to me as one of those screwdrivers with all the interchangeable heads.
And there’s another thing. Also as a result of these re-viewing conversations between Scarecrow and me, I took my ex-husband to court to protect my primary custody of my kids. I didn’t think I needed to do that (another adamant statement Scarecrow was dubious of, pissing me off royally one day by accusing me of still being married, o I was so mad) because I didn’t want to need to do that because I am afraid of my ex-husband, afraid of his anger, his explosions, his spite, his capacity for ruthless self-interest. I wanted him to not notice that I had my kids so that he’d not try to take them from me. I wanted to stay off his radar by not asking for child support. I was addicted to that fear, lived with it too long to imagine otherwise, a functioning Fear-aholic. The threat itself wasn’t real. I had the legal right to the boys the whole time. X had me over a make-believe barrel. That is only beginning to sink in. I cannot remember living with no trace of fear of a man. I had managed some (a lot) of things all on my own, some money saved and this roof over my head, etc. - I mean, I had managed to clear my life of fear-reasons. But not that one. That removal has got to change my orientation to men, all of them, big time. How much attraction can you feel while simultaneously wincing? How much nagging is fed by fear, a form of panic? How much worry is really fear wearing a concern costume? How much withholding of what you really think or feel, always hiding it like contraband, can coexist with intimacy? I could go on all day with a litany of what removing fear might affect, clearing my water, no underground spill of that toxin ongoing into my system. Wow. No really, WOW. Having control over my own life so fully as this is intoxicating. It’s giving me beer goggles looking at myself.
A relationship w/ a man, for me, can be outside every box except the one between us. I know what I value, so completely sure that I’m a mountain goat on the sheer face opinion about it. My relationship w Scarecrow, that’s been important, (my mama doesn’t approve cz its too much like an affair, and my friends don’t approve cz it’s not enough like an affair but), it’s been very valuable to me.
Scarecrow doesn’t read my blog, but I’ll post a little playlist in his honor cz the man loves his Led Zeppelin. And this playlist goes double for Tbone, who brought with him a community pool pass from the 70’s that had our photo on it, him in a cut sleeved Led Zeppelin t-shirt and a big-ass mustache + mutton chops, and me about mid-thigh height at his side (in a 'disco sucks' t-shirt). This song is the only Zep tune to ever feature a guest vocalist, Plant’s only such duet in the Zep years, with a shy standoffish indie folk music girl who died in obscurity: The Battle of Evermore. Bonus track: When the Levee Breaks
O, and check this out. When I do a reading, the 10 of Wands is Scarecrow’s card cz it looks like him to me, always shouldering something. When I searched up the tunes, I remembered this album cover, remembered sitting in a beanbag around the time that pic was taken with my dad, next to his monstersized speakers, listening to music, studying that cover for hours.
