the heat permeates me. lunch was an event, three sandwiches with grilled mushrooms and zucchini and goat cheese spread. good god. i almost died.
it's 97 degrees out there. peter is here. he's antsy. i love him. everyone loves him. he's giving away cigarettes. he's totally popular, man. but he's antsy, he needs to be moving around, he's excited. i am hot, i want to sit still.
someone in my dept left unexpectedly. i have been asked to fill their position and stay through the end of september. ok. i said ok. i get to live in a room now, instead of a tent, and i get paid, and i work 10 extra hours a week. i get to be here for a long time.
when i told my boss laura (spritely, ice blue eyes, white bleached cropped hair) that i would stay, i said, i think i could exist here, effortlessly, for an extended period of time. i feel that way.
back in san francisco, the messes left behind begin to grow roots. rent issues, tax debris, a sad lonely scooter, a fat white cat. i miss san francisco. i really do. the return will be postponed, but how sweet it will be.
this means, most likely, no burning man. that's the saddest loss i think.
i have sweat so much that there is salt on my shirt where the sweat dried.
new york city over the weekend. aquarian poets, bottles of port, pissing in the street in brooklyn. navigating a car full of insane air signs over the triboro bridge, and succeeding. peter's arrival.
my boss hovers in need of computer. more soon.
i have welcomed the heat into myself. i am made of salt and water. i am the ocean. sitting on the pavement in the sun i am the ocean. barefoot i am the ocean.
in the night, i became placid. a breeze collected me and bore me down upon your cooling skin. time lost me, misplaced me, and i pressed my palm against your nipple, wanting and feeling shame.
you can't talk. i try to talk to you about it. i've never met a creature like you and i spend much of my free time dreaming about your complexities. i have been with men like you before, who don't talk, who ferret knowledge away from me, but they didn't know what i was after. it wasn't concious. they were people that i made into problems to entertain myself during years when i needed to have problems.
you aren't a problem at all. you receive me in silence. you teach me of silence. i try not to wait around for the next revelation, but i guess i am.
sure, i'm ovulating. i am being cradled by the whole world. i have said that a few times in the past few hours. a few nights ago he held me in one arm and made me come with the other. i have been meaning to write it down, to write down that i am loved, to write down that i am a beautiful spirit surrounded by beautiful spirits, to write down that my work is smaller than my life, that my life holds all lives. i have been meaning to say that i told her about jupiter in our dark tent, that later i kissed her, that she is catty, that she lives here and that i am jealous of her but also pleased to be older than she is, pleased to kiss her stomach when she shows me her scorpio rising.
i have been meaning to write down that i wish i could live a million lives, that i wish i could devote myself fully to a million different people, to follow them, to know what it is to fully love and explore them. i have been meaning to tell you, every one of you that i've said that to, said "if there wer fifty of me i'd send one of me with you, forever," been meaning to tell you that i did. i am. i live every life. i am with every person.
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 11:58:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: le
To: magical thing with huge eyes
Subject: i walked through a thundering rainstrom to write you this
lynda barry is here this week, teaching a workshop called "writing the unthinkable." she did a book reading from cruddy last night. she's hilarious and amazing and incredibly genuine. i want to be around her all the time. my friend holly and i went to talk to her afterward and holly had her sign her copy of cruddy. holly used to live in sf and be a big sf punk dyke. she's great. anyway holly reported to me today that after i wandered away from the conversation that lynda barry called me beautiful, to her. !!!
anyway i'm about to go buy cruddy and read it. i'm going to sit in the cafe and read it for two hours before i have to work. i think i'll eat ice cream too. i am bleeding and crampy. a few minutes ago a told my friend mana that i wasn't feeling well and he said "can i hug you?" and then while hugging me he said "your belly is all warm" and i said "yes, i have cramps." then he pushed his fingers into pressure points on my lower back and it made my uterus like, open up and flow forth. it was pretty wacky. i started to explain it to him and he said "no, its' ok, i get it."
i just met a guy with scorpio moon and virgo sun and virgo rising, just like you. he said he's had to work very hard to learn to express his feelings instead of run off and hide and mull them over and strategize. talking to him made me miss my virgos.
i want to come back to australia. do you think you will be there much longer?
it's hard to meet so many great people all the time, here. i want to be with them, travel with them, and always live with them. coming back every summer isn't quite the same. but maybe i will. i have a fantasy of coming back and bringing a geodesic dome and living in that for the summer. or i was thinking it might be fun to set up a dome on your land in oregon and live up there sometimes too. what do you think of that?
i found a cat in our little basement annex the other day. i heard it mewing plaintively and mewed back to it. we mewed back and forth till i found it, just a kitten, stuck under a palette. i freed it and it darted off, all feral. i wish i could have touched it for longer.
mew.
elly (http://elly.org)
soon, the oceans rise and take us. soon, the crashing of the stars.
sometimes i start having a panic attack when too many of my worlds collide. i have to detach myself from the worlds, then, but stay in them physically. it happens to me in san francisco a lot when too many friends from too many different eras end up in one room.
last night betsy was spinning here at omega. she built altars. it was a full moon. it was like a koinonea party in sf, but it was smaller and filled with people who are not from sf, who do not know koin. i started to try and do the math, the emotional math of this environment created by betsy in upstate new york instead of sf. i began to panic. i felt ownership of the situation, of the party, of what betsy created, because i've created so many similar things with her so many times. i felt entitled to explain this to people for some reason. it felt urgent. i didn't do it, though, i just held my camera and took photos of people's moving legs. then i took my shirt off and danced.
the room was small and carpeted and we had to keep the windows closed to muffle the sound of the primal joy contained within. the thumping and moaning, the moving. steam grew on the walls and in the glass of the windows and on our bodies and on my glasses when i walked in. the room was a sauna. the carpet was damp with dripping sweat. clothes came off. we reduced ourselves to pure form, all in a few motions of hips and lungs.
dancing topless takes a certain kind of motion, to keep your freed breasts from hurting. the pain happens when your breasts are being whipped around too much. the motion to avoid this pain is definitely hip-centered with shoulders back. sweat dripped down my belly. i wanted attention and got little, not from men, nor women, not sexual. in the end that was the most gratifying thing, to have danced and kept dancing for my own joy.
under the aquarius moon outside, after that, with my bare feet firmly grounded in the dirt, i became aware of how many of us have stood that way. by us, i mean, people and animals, beings. how many of us have stood in various states of undress under the full moon, the same full moon.
i will have a forever memory of looking down at my body and seeing the sweat fly off my belly and breasts as i moved in the dense candlelight.
after waking up, i generally go directly out my door and sit on the porch with the ten or so smokers who congregate there around lunch time. some days i wake up before lunchtime, but this week i'm working the late shift so i'm waking up at noon.
it's both good and bad to be immediately dropped into a group of people upon waking. it's good because it's humbling to be in your pajamas all sleepy around people you work with. it forces you to remember that you're all human. it's bad because sometimes it's jarring to wake up to the conversations.
today i heard brandon behind me on the stairs to my room. he was sitting there doing something, maybe just staring. when he first arrived i wasn't sure about him, but i've decided i like him. he can be verbally challenging. he can also be hilarious and refreshing. the thing today was that he muttered, behind me: but she just makes it too concise and too clear that johanna's not here. a few minutes later we were sitting around the corner under the trees listening to "visions of johanna." talking about bob dylan. i was in my pj's. it was 1pm. i was drinking coffee and it was shady and dappled and the conversation wasn't a flowing river, it was more of a pond, or maybe it wasn't water at all.
so many other things happened today. i rode in a car with two leos. my period bled on. in the sanctuary i witnessed, for the second night in a row, a man from ireland singing to photos of his guru and playing accordion as accompianment. he sang all i know / is that i love you / and that my nature is joy. over and over he sang. i was supposed to be straightening pillows but i kneeled down to listen. it's a beautiful mantra. he seems like a very sincere person. he has round glasses and a bald head, he is youthful, and all of his face seems to blend together in a pleasing way.
i'm really detached from my body lately. it's hard. it's making me forget things and be generally spacy and sometimes cranky.
ok.
tonight i became overwhelmed by the need to be somewhere other than i was. where i was: inside a large building with hardwood floors, folding up one of 300 chairs. where i needed to be: outside, under the moon. the coworkers understood. i said, i can't deal with being in here anymore to them and they nodded and i took the cart and headed to do work elsewhere, but on the way i became compelled. i understood as soon as i left the building and saw the moon why i had needed to leave the building. a few moments later i found myself squatting in the grass peeing and staring at the moon.
my thought process before i peed in the grass was somewhat mindlessly insane, i mean, i don't even know if there was a thought process. i think it was a direct command from one part of me to another, a primal throwback brought to me in words from deep within: what you need to do right now, elly, is piss outside under the moon and so i was. real bathrooms were very within reach, but they were filled with incorrectness, filled with electricity, porcelain, that which is white and molded by man.
the lodge is built in a day. it is built from branches tied together, anchored directly to the earth, in the forest. it is round and low to the ground, very low to the ground. maybe four feet high. after the stick frame is built, blankets are laid over the top. then tarps are laid over the blankets. it is very dark inside. not much air gets in. in the center, inside, is a hole in the earth. a ceremonial fire has been burning, outside the lodge, and rocks heated in that fire. they are placed into the hole in the earth. they are placed there after we are all inside, crouched next to each other. women on one side, men on the other. women go in first. everyone moves around the lodge in the same pattern as the sun. that is, clockwise.
i was more than sweating. carl bigheart threw water on the rocks and it was pitch black inside. i could see nothing, not my own hand in front of my face, only the redness of the stones. i was aware of the people near me, sometimes i felt their sweat drip onto me, or i felt a stray limb. carl bigheart beat the drum into the empty blackness and the stones glowed. in the comfort of the darkness i rocked and sweated. when time for praying came i whispered to myself, surrounded by others whispering to themselves. the sweat poured. it soaked my sarong entirely, it soaked the blanket floor, it dripped into my eyes and stung.
it went like this, 20 minutes in, carl beating the drum and singing and talking to us. 10 minutes out and drinking water. 30 minutes in. 10 minutes out. we went in four times, once for each direction. we prayed for ourselves, for our loved ones, for mother earth. we gave thanks. carl would speak stories and give spiritual guidance. he said so many things that need to be said, to us. he said to avoid gossip and melodrama, he said that love is not god. he rubbed good smelling things on the glowing stones, and threw on pinches of herbs which glittered red gold as they burnt into the air.
i felt like he addressed many of the things about my life here at omega that i had been worrying about just prior to the sweat, worrying to josh the photographer actually. worrying about the gossip, the rampant hooking up, these shortcuts humans take to reach intensity faster. i had been unhappy.
on the third round i was near giving up. reached the brink of suffering. was curled fetal with my head on the wet (wet with the sweat of us) blanket breathing the air from the mud underneath. rachel (she is beautiful, with long legs and perfect feet and big almond eyes. she has been doing yoga since she was young) felt my undoing and put her hands on my sweaty back. carl went to shut the door for the complete darkness portion of the praying and i cried out: I NEED TO LEAVE, and i was cradled out to the door by many hands. as i crawled past him, carl said sit close to the lodge to me. i couldn't make it much farther than that, sweaty and weak, on the ground by the lodge. sitting in the dirt. sitting in the dirt in a puddle of my own sweat, near joe. no words, silently next to each other.
dirt was all over me. i was too overwhelmed by the assault on my body to maintain any level of propriety. neither could anyone else. we were all covered in dirt from throwing ourselves down wherever we needed to between sessions in the lodge. i saw steph lay full sweaty backed onto the dirt, stand up with a dirt tattoo covering the contours of her back and shoulders, oblivious. i had dirt and leaves stuck to me. i'd wipe the sweat off my face and just wipe leaves and dirt on to myself.
all this surrounded by dappled ground, tall green trees, moss.
on the last round, we passed the peace pipe. i went back in after my early departure from the previous, and it was safe and easy then, a womb, a warm cuddling hole full of human life. i leaned into the heat and the sweat then, happy and comforted to be at the end of the journey.
a new gentleness arose between us after the lodge. we stumbled, in sweat-drenched comradery, to the dining hall, where food never tasted so good. i have never felt so connected with these people. i have become vulnerable before them and they have supported me.
...
carl big heart is teaching a workshop here this week, up on the hill, in a classroom called birch. this morning i went to open the classroom door for him and when i parked the cart, he wasn't there, but when i got the keys out of my pocket, he was. he had emerged from the bushes next to the classroom. he was barefoot, holding a cup of coffee. i said did you just emerge from the bushes? and he nodded. i unlocked the door.
josh is back from vermont, and the sikhs are here. the garmukhs. the khasas. they sit in main hall amongst candlelight with their saturn gong and their turbaned heads. they have a large gong with the symbol of saturn on it. i want the gong. i dream of the gong. around noon, as i was standing on the porch of sanctuary, the sound of the gong came rolling up the hill to my ears. i stood perfectly still, savoring the resonant frequency of saturn.
my sleep schedule is broken. this is the first time my sleep schedule has been very broken here. it started with a bout of insomnia. i have to admit i feel comforted by the familiarity of staying up all night, of sleeping 10 hours in the middle of the day, all that. it makes eating hard, though. i slept through lunch and dinner today and woke up at 10pm. forced down some granola. vomit.
people keep leaving. it seems hard for people to want to stay here for their whole work agreement, especially if they work in the kitchen. holly is leaving. i'm trying not to freak out. i have very few really authentic friends here, relationships that i really feel i can be true in. everyone else is just a comforting human structure to say hello to and sit with at meals and learn about. but josh and holly are probably the lifeline. and they are leaving, soon. holly in a week, josh in two. and then i suppose i'll be reading a lot more books and trying to find rides to nyc so i can get my aquarius fix from eric.
some other stuff to try not to freak out about: money, the future, spending the next month away from peter, the fact that i forgot to call my sister for her birthday.
i haven't eaten any animal related things since the sweat lodge. except some indian food which was a little questionable and may have involved ghee. the nausea i felt during the lodge and my subsequent instinctual resistance to non-vegan food made me realize i should spend some time eating only plants. it is pretty hard to do that here because there's not a lot of good produce choices. pretty much you get just a few veggie choices per meal and if you don't like them, tough. but i've been sticking it out. i guess i haven't really been eating very much. revisiting some issues with consumption that came up the first time i went vegan. all food seems wrong.
