Alexandra’s Reverie

Happy Halloween, 2020

So some cool things about Halloween in the year of 2020: it's on a Saturday. There's a blue AND full moon. The weather was fairly warm, for Wisconsin: during the day, in the low-50's, with sun. Overnight, I don't know. To put it in perspective, this time last year we were getting dumped on with tons of snow. So, yeah. Good luck this time around.

The not so good things: well, it's 2020, for one thing. Not much going on, due to the pandemic and all. Apart from some clandestine parties people are throwing in their homes, or on the sly. It's funny, now even regular, law-abiding folks know what it feels like have a rave experience, deep in the woods, dodging the law. Except regular folk are cooking turkey and making cocktails and hugging loved ones, while ravers are still loving one another, but it's definitely a different kind of experience. Just a little bit.

Not that I got to celebrate Halloween, apart from handing some kids some candy in front of the house while a new roommate moved in. I'm recovering from a nice medley of infections, including yeast, gallbladder, kidney infection or stones, and probably a bout of pancreatitis, thrown in for good measure.

But I am recovering, which I'm so thankful for – just to get out of bed is amazing. My whole middle section isn't aching so much any more. I got the wakeup call I needed – I can't fuck around with my health anymore. I'm not a healthy 20-year-old. Shit, I never WAS a healthy 20-year-old. Or 17-year-old, or any of those ages that most people want to return to in their lives. Not me. I mean, there were definitely some things I would do differently this time around, but for all the ways I fucked myself over with bad choices since that time, I wouldn't go back and go through that stuff again. Not in this lifetime, no Sir.

So, I'm grateful to be on just waking up from that rock bottom experience – I mean, it's been worse, and it could certainly get even more intense, but I'm happy with this level of wakeup. At this point, I should have never needed it to come to this in the first place, but since it did, well, here I am, and I'm just grateful to be coming out of the other side of it – especially without a trip to the ER or worse. I don't want to put myself in a stupid situation where I am forced to have an organ removed – especially if its unnecessary. Fuck THAT. I'm going to keep my gallbladder, and spleen, and thyroid, thank you very much. What I DO need to do, is take better care of them all. Show them the love they deserve. And that begins today.

Not to say I won't fuck up here and there again – I'm bound to, my old habits are too ingrained, and I'm still human. It takes a while to get a train to slow to a stop and turn around in the opposite direction. But my fuckups won't be as egregious, as I just won't let myself get away with the stupid shit I've been doing most of the time.

In any case, this Halloween brought a real scare: take care of your health or face the consequences. Take care of your health, and your life will be as amazing as you want it too be.

That's a trick, and a treat, all in one.

Thank God for another day – and for my health. Amen.

Boat Work

'Boat work' today was quick and easy. Got 'er done in a few hours. Therefore, it wasn't really boat work. More, it was just doing the bare minimum – covering our boat since our last tarp was in tatters and we needed a new cover for the next winter.

Our boat stayed on the hard all summer – it never went in the water. First time it happened for us. Sucks, but what are you going to do. It's like having your husband be away all summer, or not seeing the sun all summer, to not sail all summer. Just a strange, empty feeling.

But we can be thankful for so much – all the other things we attended to that normally we neglect when spending almost every waking moment at the boat in the beautiful summer weather. Time socializing, relaxing, swimming, eating, watching fireworks, watching people in their bathing suits, etc. One long, extended vacation. With some work in the middle of the week. That's how summers used to be. I didn't sleep much – half my sleep were afternoon naps, often on the boat, swaying below deck, hearing the waves smacking up against the hull, hearing the wind rattle the halyard against the mast – that comforting sound. Waking up to junior sailing lessons and ducks swimming past your boat, boat crews coming down the piers and assembling in their boats, getting ready to race. Stretching out, getting ready for a sail ourselves, with our intrepid Portuguese Water Dog in tow.

Yes, those were the typical summer days. Endless social events, and so many nights trying to wrap it up and say goodbye, only to finally make it back to the car an hour or two later. Packing up and coming back to the house late on a Sunday evening, returning to a home that looked gigantic and foreign compared to our small quarters on the boat. Feeling like we had been camping for a week. Our home looking and feeling strange. The floor and table doing weird things – swaying every now and then, swashing back-and-forth. Sometimes it would take me a few days to get used to being back on land permanently. Only then to head back to the boat at the earliest chance, and remind my feet what true ground should feel like.

Two hours to do boat work, on a boat that we didn't sail or even work on all year long. It could be another year before we sail it. Strange.

But it's good to have variety in life. As much as you may love one thing, it's good to challenge yourself in new ways, if just to even yourself out. You can't forget leg day. Well, sometimes, even for sailors, you have to be landlubbers – work on the house, spend time at the beach, the parks, etc. Go camping. The other kind of camping – before it was all a floating camper (a boat).

Coming out of this summer, it has evened us out, and made us thankful for new things – the sauna, the hot tub, renovations around the house, work on our cars, etc. More than anything, though, it just gives us a perspective on our lives that we may not have had otherwise. It just gives us a chance to see ourselves in a new light. There are choices all of a sudden – it's not a forgone conclusion, what we're doing with all our free time. That's nice, too.

So as we wrap up the boat, approach Hallow's Eve, and another cold, long winter, we can be grateful that we even HAD choices. That is privilege in and of itself. But we don't have to stop there. We can be grateful for all the bounty that is available to us – in nature, in our community, in our resources and with our friends. There is much to celebrate and much to do. It's good to have that experience, just to be reminded of it.

Even when we our favorite summer activity is taken away, there is still a wealth of other opportunities available to us. I am grateful. Amen.

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for your bounty. Amen.

Knowing But Not Knowing

It's crazy, how long it takes us to admit what we know, and once we do admit it, to act on it. That can take our whole lifetime.

For me, so far, it's taken about half of it. That is, assuming I live to 80. Who knows. That sounds great, and also terrible. It depends on how I choose to live the next 40 years of my life. Or more. Or less.

Will I open my heart? Will I invite people close to me, and share my true self with them, or will I keep that inner part of me for myself and my husband only?

Will I have friends in my older years? Will I have people who care about me? Or will I be abandoned, as I feel I'm abandoning my parents in their older years?

Will love be just an idea, a catchphrase, or will it truly be the way I live? Will it be just the romantic love that is easy when you're in the lavender haze with a new mate, or will it be that kind of all-encompassing, agape love – the love for humankind. The love, as well, for oneself, as for others. To love a stranger as much as your own brother.

This is the point I find myself at now – time to make some real choices. Time to follow through on some real choices. No more backing down. No more negotiating, or see-sawing with myself. No more indecision, or weighing the risks vs. the gains – measuring the worth of a venture by how much pain I can tolerate, how much I can suffer. That's not for me anymore. It hasn't been for a long time, but I wasn't willing to know it yet. Sure, I could jabber about it, but to actually act on it was another thing altogether.

In spiritual growth you keep lapping yourself. You're back at the start line – you say, geez, I've been here before, what the hell. I have to do THIS again? Yet it's always different – I'm better now, stronger now, this isn't so intimidating. You're wiser, have better technique and strategy. You have better confidence in yourself that you can do it (and aren't going to die) and better faith that you'll be given assistance when you need it.

You keep coming back, feeling at least a bit discouraged that you're not as far along as you thought you were, but it's always a different you. Sometimes you even see yourself in very clear contrast from how you were to how you are now, and that provides greater enlightenment. You make realizations, and even breakthroughs. You never want to go back to the starting line, but sometimes you just have to.

Now there's an even bigger lap I have to make: I have to bolt from these starting blocks, into some dense fog, not knowing what's in there. It's always an unknown, but this time, it's very dense. I've been warned – I may run into some obstacles. Perhaps there are some hurdles left on the track. Perhaps some potholes. Perhaps someone took their dog for a walk, who did her business on the track, and that's waiting right in my lane. No matter what it is, I must still go 100%, give it my all, and have faith that whatever comes my way I can handle. This could be the hardest lap yet, but at least I'm conditioned for it now. I'm apprehensive, and a little scared, but mostly very interested on what's in there – what is this big unknown I've been hiding from myself, and has been hindering my progress? Will it turn out to be catastrophic? Or nothing, a joke? Will it be traumatic and upend my whole life? Or will it be gentle and obvious, something I just wasn't ready to digest yet?

Whatever it is, I hope my progress speeds up a bit at this point. After all, I may not have another 40 years to figure this shit out.

Thanks be to God for having the patience to deal with my stubborn ass. Praise be to God, and all gratitude for helping me see the unsavory aspects of myself.

Amen, peace, and love.

Share Your Heart

That's the guidance I was given.

But how, and most importantly, how do I allow myself to share my heart? What are these old creaky impulses and instincts to keep it hoarded to myself, locked up behind heavy fortressed walls and thick oak doors?

An instinct so deep in me that I don't even remember how or when it sprung from. Always there, this instinct to clam up, just as my heart was starting to gently open, and let itself leak out. Just as I was about to flow and connect with others, or share something real and deep within me, WHAM, like a venus fly trap, it would snap shut, closed off to the world.

I saw myself walking into the bright light – so bright it should have blinded me, but it was kinder than that. This light enveloped me, protected me, healed me, and illuminated all my true, beautiful qualities, vanquishing all my diseased, misguided attributes. This light was pure love.

In this light I saw myself unzipping a suit I was wearing – heavy and old, and tattered and moldy and full of all kinds of infestations and chains. It was my ego, my wounds, my dense self that's stuck in this world. All the trappings of this physical-bound life. My fears, worries, shame, fear, etc. All those things like a 500-pound suit I've been wearing for years, with broken glass on the inside, cutting and burning me. I saw myself in one swift motion, just unzip it and cast it off me, simple as that.

I stepped forward, leaving that suit behind on the ground, crumpled and useless, like a crab's molten shell. A fresh, clean, light me stepped forward – just me. It was JUST ME – no baggage, no negative emotions, or past experiences to weigh me down. No influence from outside. Just me – pure light, in this pure form, stamped as I was for this life. Just that pure blueprint of who I am, and who I should be. It was like feeling myself for the first time in my life. Feeling for the first time as my true essence, and understanding how much I carry around that's NOT me, not even close. Like a sponge, I've taken so much on, but so little of it is really for me, or for me to pass along to others. So little feels like my true calling, or a service to others.

I asked God what He wills of me, what He would have me do. The answer was simple and profound: “Share your heart,” He said. “It's all people want from you and it's what you don't give them.”

That hit me. Of course. It's all I want to give, is my heart – but I've been conditioned to not give it. At least not freely. Not by my parents so much – while my father has a hard time connecting with his heart, it's only partly that. Our society does not teach us how to channel our hearts while protecting ourselves. Or rather, it's very scary to live from your heart and share your heart if you don't have faith to guide you and support you. Therefore, we learned to clam up, and not trust it was safe. The desire and instinct was there, but even when it is begged of me, I have such a hard time sharing it.

That's probably why I love the L.S. so much – polyamory. That is a place where I've been able to open my heart. There is a unique portal that can open when a new comet-like relationship is formed, that allows you to only share the best of yourself, and to see the best in someone else. It's a truly beautiful experience. Now I just need to carry that over into my regular, every day life.

To give my heart would mean I would feel free to express love, joy, peace, generosity, and all the things that are in me to express, without holding back. Without hindrance or self-criticism. To simply unblock my heart, and get out of its way. It would mean simply allowing it to do what it is meant to do. Undam the river. Let it flow as it will, it will do the rest. I don't even have to DO anything – I just have to stop HINDERING myself. Blocking myself up.

Isn't it amazing, that things a child does so naturally we have to relearn for the rest of our lives? To live as a child, with the playfulness, sincerity and open heart of a little one, and the wisdom of an old woman – now that would be the perfect balance. May I reach that place, even if just for a second.

Thank you, Jesus, for this guidance. Amen.

Old Friends

It's great seeing old friends, again. They look like new, or rather, that they haven't aged very much, if at all. Meanwhile, I always feel like I've aged a lot, on top of how old I already was. But I'm trying not to think that way anymore.

The way I'm thinking now is how lucky I am just to see them. I'm lucky just to know them. I'm grateful that they're well, and happy, and healthy. I mean, they both just looked great. H. especially – he's Indian, so he has that lovely dark skin that doesn't seem to wrinkle. That beautiful jet black hair that takes to silver in a gorgeous way. She is foxy and beautiful as ever, too, with those lovely hazel eyes, full lips, and smooth skin. She's of Italian stock – so she's lucky, too. Me, with my Anglo-Saxon/Swedish genes (mainly) am more susceptible to the typical crumble and cracking like old dough left out in the sun too long, both soft and smooshy, but split and tired. A doughy face that doesn't do too well out in the sun. The problem is I love the sun, and need it desperately for my health.

But the point is, seeing old friends is awesome, and Thank God for FaceTime and Zoom and Skype and all the rest, so we can see each other and feel like we're there, even when we're hundreds of miles away.

For now, I've going through a physical/spiritual storm. I used to think my physical issues caused me to get on a spiritual path, but now I experience it as the other way around – my spiritual path is putting these physical issues in front of me to help me work on my inner self. My physical problems are a manifestation of deeper emotional, spiritual issues. Sure, food, sleep, exercise, and general lifestyle choices make a big difference, but ultimately it's my spirit that's underlying all of those choices.

I think I had a mild kidney infection. Or at least, my left kidney is working hard now to cleanse. I've put my body through a lot. Or, I've put myself through a lot without listening to myself and helping myself out. I'm trying to reverse that now – I'm trying sincerely to listen, and to communicate with my deeper self, the unconscious part that is really in charge of all the decisions I make, not my rational, conscious self.

The best I can do now is continue to pray to God for support and guidance, and to be thankful every day for His continued love and support. Thank you Jesus. Amen.

Sometimes You Have to Dance First

Okay, I'm writing now. Little late. Procrastination happens. It's okay. But here I am. Sometimes you have to dance first, you know?

My body is tight and achy, with little embers of inflammation caught fire on me, throughout my body. Shot on to me as if from a crackling fire in high winds, I feel the burnings throughout my body.

The achiness and the tightness go sortof hand-in-hand. Ligaments that haven't been stretched, exercised, or given proper blood flow or oxygen – tight and rubbery, like overcooked chicken. So horrible to think how we eat the very flesh we resemble.

Muscles tight and sore, unaware of their purpose. Knees with patellae flowing off track without evening knowing, like cars running over those ridges on the side of the road. My knees creak and crack and crumble just like a car tire over those rumble strips, but they don't know that they shouldn't. Or they're too busy fighting with the underworked and under instructed quad muscles and tendons to know. Cartilage like torn up pavement, hit too many times by heavy plows in the winter. Cellulite like frost heaves under my skin, warped and lumpy. Skin cracked like a desert road, baked in the unrepentant sun for years and years.

What do these things do in my body, the muscles, ligaments, joints? I don't know enough. It would be good to know, if for no other reason than to have better respect for my body. Instead, I've had my subjective experience to tell me how my body ought NOT to feel – how imbalanced it can get, how heavy and weighed-down. How you recognize yourself as more than a disease than a body, a disease more than a person.

Today I got the taste of health again, and it came on a day I woke up feeling so unhealthy. A gust of fresh air on a stagnant, fetid ship, caught in the doldrums – it was oxygen my body and soul needed.

Somehow I was feeling off this morning, and then I got a second wave this afternoon. I was going to jump into some spiritual homework (including this writing), but while I was getting some things sorted out I started listening to some music on my headphones while my husband napped upstairs. One song turned into another, and another, and before you know it, I was watching videos on how to wine, and soca workout videos, and how to samba, salsa, etc. Just having a great time moving to the music, opening up and relaxing my body, and trying to get my hips to do what seems like quantum physics for them: carribbean and latin dance. Proper whinin'. If I can learn how to do some proper dancehall and wining while in this quarantine, then I will be a very happy girl. This may have been worth it, to some degree ;).

So yes, procrastination for sure, but a better kind of procrastination – I procrastinated by doing something I loved, I needed, and gave me health and joy. True health and true joy. Thank you, God. Just to dance and hear good music feels so good on a day you woke up feeling awful and fearful. Thank you Jesus.

I've procrastinated FAR longer on giving myself the permission to just dance any 'ol time I want and NEED, than any other kind of 'work' I have to do, so there. There it is.

Sometimes you just have to dance first.

You know?

Bless up.

Friday

Yeay, it's Friday. And I have a UTI. And yeast infection. And gallstones. Or something. Good things come in threes, or so I've heard – so maybe the same is true with bad things.

The good thing is this is the first time I've felt this way in a while. I actually forgot what a gallstone felt like (as if I could forget, but apparently I can) – it took me a few days to realize what it was, even with all the classic symptoms. I woke up early one morning with a sharp pain in my right shoulder blade. I asked myself: did I just sleep wrong? As if I hadn't had that exact same symptom a number of times before – crazy!

And it took me a minute to realize that I had a UTI, as well. Not that I'm going to get antibiotics for it. Fuck that noise. I've taken enough antibiotics in my life to kill a walrus. I'm trying to rebuild my digestive flora from all that destruction.

So sometimes to you have to fall back – really fall back – to realize how far you've come. The climb back up is annoying and painful and tiresome, but you know you'll be just fine. This time, I know I'm not alone. That's a big difference. I just need to know it even MORE to REALLY start to understand, and heal from all that ails me – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

JCVD (yes, him again) said in his film of the same name that he wanted to get his health back. I feel like I never had my health to lose. Or, at least, not since I was a kid. Maybe until I was in my mid-teens, maybe that would be considered 'healthy'. But after age 17, it definitely all went downhill, and fast. I shrank and shriveled up, turning into an old woman physically as I was supposed to be growing into a young woman. I lost my period from about the age of 17 to the age of 23. Maybe some spotting, but that's it. I was wasted. That period that JCVD may have encountered, of feeling wasted physically, mentally, spiritually, was how I felt in my formative years. I was always envious of people like him: from the outside, it seemed like he had it all – great looks, charm, great body, athletic prowess, and ambition and confidence. Pretty soon, he DID have it all: the body, the looks, the health, the money, the women, his dream career, etc. But even at the top, it wasn't enough for him. And even then, he still suffered.

Then, as he plunged down into his spiral, it really got tough. And then he really suffered. It was after that period that he said he felt wasted. That he needed to get his health back. The looks had faded – he aged fast in those years he partied hard. But he still had so much, even if he felt he lost so much.

I might count myself lucky: to have grown up in a 'wasted' body, mind, and spirit. At least the body part. Never feeling able to live my full potential, never feeling desired or beautiful, never feeling capable of achieving – or even naming – my dreams. To toil in less extremes, but in one constant, long drudge for years in that wasted body. Perhaps in the end, I'm the lucky one, because while I never had the high highs he had, I also didn't have the low lows. I mean, I've had some very low points, but I never had as far to fall – on the matter of fame, looks, reputation, athletic ability, etc. To be that physically perfect, and to loose it, through age and poor choices – that never seem like poor choices at the time, or at least not that big of a deal – must be just tortuous. Maybe I'm the lucky one, to be feeling almost better than I did in my 20's, and certainly in most of my 30's. I'm actually improving in some ways with age.

I still love and respect JCVD so much, but because he is so humble and open and generous with sharing his journey, it makes me realize that while he was lucky in some ways, I may be lucky in others. We're all given our burdens to carry, and why I have mine and he has his we can never know. That is up to God to know.

With that, I'll say thank you, God, for MY good luck, and God Bless you, JCVD, for sharing yours with us – the world. Amen.

Sad

I don't know why I'm sad. Well, I do, but I don't. The obvious stuff – the surface stuff – is the heaviness and weariness I feel. The pain and suffering that comes with a physical ailment – in this case, gallstones and a UTI. Overall, it's that infections within me have gained the upper-hand, and have taken over my body. I didn't remember how bad this felt until now – it took me a minute to realize what was going on, because it had been so long.

Yes, it has been a while now – that's a good thing, because this state used to be a regular occurrence. So regular, it was a state of being. As far as I still have to go in my healing, at least I'm not at that point anymore. At least I can appreciate now that I HAVE made some progress, and things ARE moving. That's hard for me to see, because things seem to move so slowly, and I'm so impatient for reclaiming my life – if I ever had it.

It feels like I've worked all my life at being healthy, at being “right”. Getting the boat “right”. But I never seem to make it – if I do, it's very short-lived, or turns out to be an illusion, or both. I think I'm in my utopia and I wake up to cold, hard reality. Bam.

But there's obviously been something wrong from me from the start: my perception. I keep feeling like there was something wrong with me when I was young, some fatal flaw. And the harder I worked to eradicate it, to overcome it, the worse it got, and the harder it held on. Now, at 40 years of age, I feel like I'm at some kind of crossroads. Sure, I've been at many before, but this time it truly is different, because it just is. The whole world is blowing up right now. It would be impossible for me to think that it's just me.

But I think I'm finally understanding something about myself, even if I'm not changing it much yet: I sensed that there was something very off about me from the start, but what was off wasn't me, or something in me, it was my perception that something was wrong with me. Thus, this insidious pattern of repeating the cycle, chasing my own spiritual tail. My perception was like a bug planted into me – it is the true virus, bacteria, whatever that has caused me so much suffering all my life. Caused me to doubt myself to no end. Caused me to hate myself, and envy others for their perfect lives and easy way of moving through the world. Of course, I could portray a different perception from how I felt, but the perception of myself as inherently flawed or wrong somehow just stuck with me. It colored even my searching for freedom and truth. How do you know what is real until you FEEL what is real and true?

I feel I need one of those experiences, to remind me that I'm not that warped perception. Apparently, I had one the other day, but I couldn't feel it. Not enough to know. There are whole dimensions I'm suffering from not experiencing fully, yet I know I'm in them, I know they're there. It's just like I'm waiting for the bubble to pop, or the lights to come on, that screen to come up, and let me see where I REALLY am, and what is TRULY important and happening to me.

Well, that's all for now. But I'm sad, I'm tired, and I'm impatient. I need God and I need him now. But do I know how to let Him in? That's the question.

Amen.

I Love You, JCVD

I'm here writing again. Because I'm doing this every day. Because I'm not going to break it again. All I want to do is sleep. That will be the case soon enough. For now, though, time to write. I procrastinated. Now this is what I get. I have to stay awake to make it happen.

A Wednesday. Nothing much to report. I'm still fighting the old fight – me vs. fatigue. How to beat the fatigue. How to get through the day in one piece. If an addict was waiting for that next drink – waiting for 5 o'clock to come so she could pour herself that first glass of wine – then I'm like a sleep addict, waiting for that moment in the afternoon when I can finally get home and take a nap.

It's not as serious, I know, but I do tend to be obsessed with sleep. I'm always tired. But especially now, as I taper down my caffeine and while I'm not feeling well. Gallstones. Felt like shit for a few days. Getting better now, but still on the mend. So no wonder I'm extra tired. But I just need for me to get better. I need to find the prayers in my heart that will remind me that everything is going to be okay – everything is beautiful.

Man, I just emerged from the rabbithole of more JCVD interview videos. Saw one where he was interviewed on some telemarathon or something, and they treated him like a dancing monkey. Not much respect. He was super-generous, too, and heartfelt. He was game for the things they threw his way, did what they asked, and even answered a rude question about “have you ever done drugs”. He just answered it straight-up, “Everyone in this room knows the answer to that question,” and “Yes, but so what,” and went on to give some advice. He seems not quite himself in that interview, like he was still on something, or fighting that fight, but I have so much love and respect for JCVD for his humanity, bravery, and beautiful soul. He was the guest on a show, in front of millions of people – live, it seemed – and they were ready to humiliate him. When he's vulnerable and still being very gracious and kind to the hosts, fans, and everyone. Just makes you realize how much people will take from you, and ask of you, and the second you slip just a little bit (as if they never make mistakes in their lives) they're all on you like vultures, or pointing and laughing at you. That literally happened in this interview – JCVD was dancing with a beautiful woman – a very sexy dance – and he got hard. He tried to hide it, but everyone else was laughing and the host was evening pointing at it. So cruel. You want a monkey to dance, and then you want to make fun of him. JCVD shone through every time, as far as I'm concerned. I'm so glad to see the other comments, too, saying what a beautiful person he is. At the end of the interview he was introduced to a 5-year-old boy who had some kind of medical issue. JCVD showed him true compassion, tenderness, and love. It's beautiful. Many could play at that, but not many would be so generous and straight from the heart as he was/is. That's what I'm falling in love with – the man that he truly is. The beautiful spirit that he is. Growing up I knew Van Damme as the action star, the kick-ass martial artist. The icon. But now I have the pleasure of getting to know him as a real person – his ups and downs- and his true beauty inside. He always had it, and it kept shining through – at least during interviews – during his dark moments.

Even two other favorites of mine – Graham Norton and Jeff Goldbloom – were making fun of him, calling him “coo-coo” and “Bonkers”. That made me sad. Even people who are sensitive and who would be considered weird or crazy by others are making fun of someone who has deep, deep sensitivity. That made me sad.

So watching all these interviews, from the start of JCVD's career to this year, gives me inspiration – that is how a brave soul who is trying to do right in this world lives in a place of fame. In the limelight, at a terrible, dangerous height. As a human, he is winning, he is pure gold. I wish others could see it. Many do – many people love him, and say so, I think for the same reasons.

In his 2008 film JCVD he said this in his monologue: “It's hard for me to judge others, but easy for others to judge me,” easy to blame me – or something like that. So sad but true. Those who wish to be their best selves or not judge others often have to deal with terrible judgment from others. The more he is judged, it seems, the kinder and more humble, and sincere he gets. He waxes philosophical. If people want to make fun of that, then they are missing the true essence of life. They are losing. They are defeating themselves.

I respect you, JCVD. I admire you. I love you. Thank you for being you, and for sharing your heart with the world. God bless you, JCVD.

His Birthday

It was his birthday today – a day worth celebrating, and worth trying to re-connect for. A happy occasion. Also a sad one, when I think of the time that has passed and how much time we could have been together this whole way. But here we are – the possibility of re-connecting, even if just once, over Skype. But I'll take it, for sure.

How much of our relationships – and our lives – are only figments of our imagination? They are so subjective – our state of mind and our perception really dictate how we live our lives, and certainly how we remember them. We could have been two completely different people, living completely different lives, if we tap into two different states of consciousness. Two different perspectives.

I guess that's what pains me, too – the life not lived. The roads not taken. The ones that were there all along, and always available to me, if only I were brave – or conscious enough – to take them. If only I could have been free of hesitation and free of my own hindrances that held me back from trying and doing so much. Held me back from even trying so many things. Things that I would have loved just to try, just to have the joy of stepping into that stream which felt like home to my soul. I never even allowed myself that – or only in secret, or in round-about ways. I would let it be an accident, I would paint myself into a corner where my “true self” would HAVE to come out, like some superhero tearing off his shirt just in the nick of time to save the damsel in distress. I could let the world squash me nearly flat before I sprung into action, revealing my true, superhuman self. What a weird fantasy. God forbid I speak confidently about my actual talents and innate value – that would be wrong. But you can press me to the limit until I have no CHOICE but to let my inner Clark Kent or Incredible Hulk come out and obliterate everything that sought to do it harm. If called upon, in other words, I can release that magic, but only when it is absolutely necessary.

Otherwise, I'm to stay in my humble little box, taking it gentle and easy and being the considerate one and limited in my skills. I can't even enjoy the talents I have, because they're not good enough. I won't let myself believe it. I certainly can't acknowledge them myself, for that would be conceited and selfish and all those bad things. What I can do is let other see them in me, shine a light on me. I can let others, at the breaking point, when I am in full hero/martyr mode, I can finally allow someone else to give me an accolade, and state a fact of my worth. Then I can accept it, because it's as if I'm doing it on my death bed. My last breath, when I won't be alive to deal with the repercussions of me making such an audacious proclamation. How dare I say in front of others better than me (especially God) that I have worth and talents and the right to be happy and proud of them? Who does she think she is?

So what does all that have to do with his birthday? I don't know, just got me thinking, that perhaps our time together before wasn't as magical as I remember it. It's common, when you see an old beau, that you're nervous about how you look, how you come across, and you question if things were really as perfect as you recall. Perhaps it's all best left in the past, but you can't help thinking about it, all the same. I wonder who I am now, and if it's the same person he remembers or he wanted.

I guess there's only one way to find out, and it starts with a Skype call. Real or imagined, we'll get to the bottom of it. Amen.