Category: Compositions

That which targets your deepest desires to pinpoint accuracy, then carresses inch by inch in alluring whispers tasping – pouring over and into synapses, promising release of every repressed or denied craving until one is pushed past resistance into begging for pleasure to never stop.

I saw the couple heading toward from where I’d come as I drove past them.

They were both laughing and smiling with eyes alight, in their 60’s-70’s – but only in that they had gray-silver hair and understanding of their own maturity.

It was clear to me then that they had found love again and were making the most of it by holding hands while striding confident in the bright day’s sun.

I have developed a method of teaching English pronunciation fluency well – with laughter, playfulness, and joy of discovering each aspiring learner’s innate talents.

The challenge for me is how to charge for these services outside of the US, for here I still want to make it affordable, which I have determined will be $30 for 1 1/2 sessions.

“Peanuts” to the American Capitalistic standard.

But, to an Egyptian over a year ago, multiply 30×18 = $540 US equivalent for a session. 1 US dollar was then worth 18 egp.

Therefore, I have decided that in international “less affluent” economy to American economy situations, I would like a session I give to provide me equivalent of a meal for my family, but that my fee should not deprive a student’s equivalent of their family’s week worth of meals, for example.

With the new student I taught today, we will see in the next week what that amount looks like from Egyptian to American currency perspective.

I believe that the gift of language should not be prevented by dictates such as money.

The shy bird flew in through a window, lured by shiny baubles left out on the table.

When the man in the room spoke to her gently, making only the slightest of movements, she began warbling to him – telling him of wonders she’d seen.

Then, upon winging to leave, she reflected how he had listened to her song earnestly – and found herself desiring more of his company.

After I saw, then had dreams about him, I had to take a closer look at what he had grown from and now appeared to be.

I had avoided following him when I was married – had ignored my instinct’s jangling – but he kept showing up in different forms in front of me.

I would be pulled in to fall, realize who it was – then run away again, wondering why he so affected me.

Now, my nose was being forcefully pushed toward him, no matter old inhibitions resisting.

It wasn’t his fame or fortune, nor acclaim, nor societal approval. Any and all of this could change in an instant.

It was the integrity of his spirit – and that, like me, he never gave in to disillusion.

He just kept coming back, Striving.

Caught in the sensate memory of past tragedy, she went to turn across as the bus sped up from the green light’s signal.

Luckily, she saw it just in time to swerve – and yielded.

(Five minutes ago…)

I know God exists, but I am not sure as of yet how to define it.

When I prayed in Christianity, I felt that we prayed to the idol of Jesus and that God was held farther from us.

When I pray in the masjid and listen to the Imam, he is at one with his version of God – but I am deflected.

I pray in my own way, seeking this undefined connection – with plenty of sajud.

Sense of a black jaguar presence approached me one evening when I was alone and praying back in California.

It came to me when my spirit cried out in anguish.

Just like my cat Pisces found me through my mother when I was a child and “saved” me.

Life is filled with such beauty and a type of “magic” that humans forget to comprehend.

Perhaps this is why I identify more with nature.

I am aligned with the force which cherishes and encourages our connection to it.

At first, the ache hits me: jarred from any reality I had ever invested in, I walk as a hollowed remnant, reminded of who I was and could have been.

The spandex and styled hair, makeup, diamond rings – these just symbolize idealized stability, which is capable of dissolving in a heart’s beat.

But, I was there and would be there again. Not where they are, but in my own solid state of being.

Healing fills insides as a nourishing balm creating new matrix from speaking with the trainers, managers, desk clerks, and other therapists – inquiring if there is need for and a place for me to contribute.

I want to be “Real,” again – and with every step forward, I strengthen my intention.

When the young man approached her with desire, she sent him back to his fiance to confess his secret.

Years later, she lamented after having – then losing him – that he had not extended to her the same courtesy.

I have put it out there that I want something, but because it involves working for someone I greatly admire, this must be enough.

It is one thing to push past barriers towards a personal goal’s dream, but another if it involves a person – for I would not infringe.

They chose her because she did not submit to Chaos, but reigned it in – and redirected.

She saw truth in light and dark with equal justice, no matter status or ranking.

Her vengeance was swift and ruthless if anyone harmed them.

Yet, she understood and had compassion for humans.

I’m trying to find my income tallies because I haven’t received W-2’s from employers that did not care about destroying what I was building in collaboration with them.

No, I don’t want to call them. I don’t want to renew contact or update my address.

I won’t restart that energy out of necessity and receive more taint from interaction.

This is new for me – just not going to take it or bend for it or accommodate for needs.

There is such a mess of paperwork to reach for benefits to counteract stupidity’s tangling with my life line, countering their “evil” by hearings and plea paperwork, and then self advocating assertions to get the agencies to see what’s been happening as they have been mired in their own disfunctioning.

Yada yada feck-ing yada!

I’m on the phone with my friend who just rides crazy like a champ and instigator in the feelings and understandings of any and all things humans are experiencing as extreme highs and lows in reality.

The relay chatter covers my brain and infiltrates everything, jacking attention – feeding, draining, feeding.

I think to myself, is this good – to push and pull me and take me out of my misery?

We laugh, we joke – we could do anything if I just gave consent to it.

But, it isn’t powerful enough to blast through the tangle of this knot that has been and continues to be thematic in my life.

That’s my job. It’s what I have to do.

I am the captain of this vessel.

I just want to put it all behind me. None of it was me or what I am about.

None of it happened with an ounce of blame that could be pointed at me.

I was on top of it. I had my stuff managed.

They didn’t. I was just collateral damage.

I want to scream for having to keep revisiting it.

When can I just Move On?

Do the basics, turn away – then ignore it.

When we were young and together, long before we were married, a friend of my ex’s gave him a ceramic doumbek lap drum with beautiful blues mixed with cream and white, and animal skin drawn tight over a wide, round rim.

Even then, I sensed he was withdrawing (before my twenty-first birthday) – and I pestered and begged him to teach me the drum’s basics, wanting to connect with my musical creativity and him to heal the mysterious rift growing between us.

His obliging had an effect on me akin to what it must have felt like to humans first being granted fire – and became a way for us to entwine and interact through his and my playing synchronous rythms.

This was when we lived in The Old Biddle House on Pepper Street in San Luis Obispo, California, in a room on the Northwest side upstairs, open to the higher tier of a palm tree.

We had our futon bed outstretched, declared rebel independence from parents – and a piece of owl’s under fluff with a flame design in the center wafted in to greet me one day when I sewed our first Ren Fair costumes, alone and listening to Primus performing “Sailing The Sea Of Cheese” and thinking about our relationship.

I still have the feather in a memory box of sentimental jewelry.

“So wise and farseeing you – so proud me to have you as my dragonlet!”

The mother then placed her regal head delicately on fore claws and plumed out a contented puff of smoke, as her eyes whirled and shifted their colors, pondering the world and eternity.

Churring with pleasure, her youngling snuggled close next to her.

Her walking sway caught my attention as my car approached, traveling from the opposite direction.

From across the way, I could see that she was special as she shambled along in her dark, full length coat while carrying a twisted-top, several layers thick plastic grocery bag in each hand.

After walking several feet, she’d put one down, exhausted but determined, and suddenly swing around to behind her.

It seemed she was looking for sign of help, and I felt drawn toward her as if she were important.

After I had passed and turned to the street leading to the gym,, I backtracked to find her again, pulling up and over to ask what ailed her.

She told me she needed to get to a town almost an hour away, and that she remembered the way from so many years before.

I asked if i could get her to a better location where she might find a ride that could take her.

She considered a moment, perplexed in her aged and regal wisdom.

“No, i need to stay on this road. Thanks for the thought,” she countered.

Worrying about her and the reasons for her flushed-from-cover journeying, I realized as I drove away that my offer restored her dignity by giving her the option to reject it.

I remember that though I was tired, for the first few years after “The Fall,” I still had resilient reserves which I worked to capitalize on.

You can see it in my profile picture – the layer of stored optimism as a roundness to my visage.

Five years later of increasingly hard grind and disappointments’ “failures” have thinned buffer.

The Crone has been feasting at my expense and sucking with glee – her teeth clenched over bone as she leers while sucking on its marrow.

How does one recover from loss of reserves without money or backup resources?

How does one keep from exploding in pent up, vexed rage when arriving to embittered outcome?

The topic of “forgiveness” has always been irksome because “consent” was never an option.

After we moved in, my youngling figured out how to use our oven.

It was a trick to do so because the bulb in the control panel that lets you see numbers change as you increase baking time has dimmed to where you can’t see the numbers unless in the pitchest black – and then, only faintly.

However, everything we baked comes out wonderfully, and this let me know that for the first time in any rental situation, we have an amazing oven!

I had asked our landlord if we could have it serviced awhile ago, but the model number had apparently been scraped off by a previous tenant.

She did her best to figure out a solution, and one day unexpectedly, her repair men showed with a smaller standard oven as replacement.

They were so kind and proud to be helping us when I opened the door and saw it leveraged on their dolly, prepared to be installed.

But, I couldn’t help myself.

I refused to let them exchange it!

It was such an embarrassing situation for me, as clearly my landlord was doing her best to provide for our needs, and the repair guys were ready.

I let them and her know how much I appreciated their kind generosity, but that we would deal with the dim bulb because the current oven was baking so beautifully!

I have been trying to simplify.

In doing so, I hope to gain more relaxed efficiency and have adapting to new situations go more smoothly.

This last week, I have not been working out because my attention has been focused on incorporating certain healing supplements and the antibiotics into a scheduled routine

I noticed that my body was already feeling pushed in dealing with overcoming infection, and that even though it needs and wants exercise, it was registering the extra stimulus as negative.

Therefore, I adjusted to the above, while experimenting with diet.

My cooking confidence is so low that I am currently just throwing myself at recipes, one at a time, and doing what I will with them while trying to gauge my positioning as I follow their guidelines.

It’s a form of accommodating for my rebellious resistance – in which I am hoping that with more gains and successes than failures, I will over time feel more competent.

Diets tend to put us in distress – and they do this to me, especially.

I like the concepts of foods in the yeast-free and specific carbohydrate diet, for they minimize sugars, offer selective carbohydrates, and basically work to help your body gain an edge over sugar-hungry yeast and bad internal bacteria.

But, the flavors can be off-putting, and I could feel my body actually under duress from needing carbohydrates and food it recognizes when eating results of these recipes in order to make a new transition.

Therefore, in tradition of my always “funking around” with recipes and making them “worse,” I have decided to work with these established recipes to actually make them “better.”

You will see my upcoming modifications and can judge for yourself as they embrace the concepts of the diets, but veer just enough to make them more palliatively “nommable.”

What is also important for me is to eat smaller portions, but with more frequency, to engage my metabolism’s better processing.

If I withhold food, my digestion slows down while it clings to whatever I feed it.

Understanding agency processes, patterns, trends, and how people tend to think while managing such things (especially where potential pitfalls or gaps in important communication can happen) allows me to navigate and guide collaborations efficiently because I often see and convey where I need to clarify to ensure productive completion.

When I began posting here, I just wanted to be seen.

I did not even necessarily want to be seen or acknowledged by others.

I just needed to bear witness to my own valid existence by externalizing.

However, as I post and share my processing, I am grateful to all of you for your support and encouragement.

I very much enjoy and appreciate your sharing in return with me!

I had not realized that I might gain connection to such a wonderfully creative community.

Thank you for journeying alongside me!

The sweet lady from PUA called back and took data from when I was doing housecleaning.

Apparently, people who were self employed during initial lock down of the pandemic could still qualify for benefits, even if they made too little to file taxes.

Unemployment had completely ignored this data when I had submitted it, and instead had focused on my moving into healing therapies.

Oh, what a sweet spin can now occur along further punt of the tangled ball which has become my case management!

(i have to look up title’s quote source…)

A PUA specialist called me this morning, then apologized because her mouse suddenly stopped working and thus she could not follow through with her questionnaire.

I began laughing – cackling in mirthed delight, actually – joking with her to “back away quickly” because the field of null around me diverting any attempts of functioning must be reaching her.

She chuckled upon hearing my story with unemployment and being constantly bounced between status of employed vs. an independent contractor in the system, and assured me it was her mouse’s battery.

I look back at the mess that employer made of my life in March 2020, so worried that I would somehow be the downfall of his business and cause him disaster.

I mean, I filed my taxes as an independent contractor when it turns out that by law he misrepresented my position and I should have filed as an employee.

Unemployment then says, “Oh no, you don’t get to use your most recent earnings for our calculations. We are going to base funding on when you lived most in poverty.” And then, they jerk me away from prospectively more favorable calculations from PUA.

PUA might calculate my case differently and get things moving, finally – but, I told the gal that, likely, any efforts would just further lock my case in tangled administration.

She sympathized and thanked me for being so positive and laughing. I said, “Of course. Otherwise, I would be screaming and crying!”

“What does not kill you makes you stronger.”
But, what nourishes you takes you higher.

The quoted text distorts our expectations by blinding us to the fact that we can reach for and deserve better outcomes.

When we are given “bad” messaging that limits, we need to amend it to achieve and aspire.

She used to think that the elven designed pendant she had tried on had cursed her when she viewed how she looked with it on in the mirror.

But lately, she has been thinking that maybe the pendant flashed her a vision of the curse that was already upon her so that she could undo it.

She had been tracking for many years, looking for any sign of the man’s once brilliant mind, but there was always nothing but the drug-dulled response of a soul outpacing its pain’s despair.

Until one day, things began to feel “off” and his avoidance turned into projecting onto her. As his identity reemerged by self defense/attack posture, she realized his intelligence had turned feral.

When the healer worked on the woman’s body, the woman was surprised to find that her heart was tethered through to back of her left shoulder – as if by a burning line of golden fire.

As the healer moved on, the woman found pain in back of her right shoulder that she had not known was there, which once released, swelled renewed vitality.

Now unified, her shoulders’ strength felt as if ablaze, and her arms craved to ignite and wield the Blade of Justice to cut through the Gordian Knot of all illusions.

In order to heal the rifts inside of me and no longer live as aspects of self identity taking turns then reshuffling, I am having to allow my pieces to catch up to me.

I do not enjoy this process because what I am finding is the hardened, wisened warrior woman brings the real age of fifty like a heavy suit of armor laid upon me.

I do not want to be crushed by what has happened to me.

I am resilient in my core – just having difficulty in accessing

How is it that in two month’s time my side hair strands go from red-brown-blond to lighter highlights – now entwined with silver?

I have been using a new shampoo since our arrival, and it is stripping away whatever illusions before covered me.

My light is beginning to shine more clearly, slowly reemerging.

Yet, to be “of age” comes with greater responsibilities than I have already had to take on.

I am having to dodge and weave around society’s pre-expectations and the harsh incongruities already experienced.

I am still that youthful girl who had everything time and again taken away from me.

I deserve my chance to shine – to not be relegated to wrinkles and dottering because “Oops, so sorry, time is up for you.”

F*** you, you laughing hyena of a trickster!

I will not be robbed of who I am any longer!

Whenever I have gone to a stylist, they have always tried to alter my visage in a way that completely abandons my unique expression.

Today, I went to a young woman who actually listened to my natural approach of growing and managing my tresses.

Because they are now longer, their curls were flattening under weight and I had lost the flow around my face that I have been cultivating.

Usually, I have been told tht if I want a certain shape, my hair must be shortened and layered in ways I just don’t like wearing.

But, she kept my length and layered by two innovative ways to where at the end of the cut and style, youthful me was reclaimed!

As a true professional, she took away the excess weight and restored my own beauty.

There I am again in the mirror, staring back – smiling and happy!

I wonder as I meet new people if maybe I am not meant to be with anyone.

It took me ten years to get here to this new place where the type of resources and opportunities I need and desire can begin to be fashioned.

These things I have sought were only found as remnants and hints elsewhere, and my guiding instinct is tuned to frequencies only it hears.

When I am in a relationship, all I am wants to please my man: there has never been space for this while having my own command.

Men do not often say openly what they would like from partnership to make it easy to match up with them while advancing in one’s career.

Where is the balance that is possible to promote and maintain while attending all that we hold dear?

When I was a very young child, my nightmares were terrifying. The places they would take me in my powerless vulnerability forced my eyes and heart open to see truths underlying everything while I was so aware of my powerless vulnerability.

I witnessed the torture and murdering, the tearing apart of pure goodness and repeated rape of innocent virginities by an unfathomable lust and rage against beauty that not even killing countless numbers could appease in evil’s insatiably-craving hunger.

Why show me these things – as if I were a soul that had been hopping through lifetimes, leaping frantically while seeking where it could at last find safety in emerging?

I was an isolated unit called by great purpose, but left disconnected from my sisters and brothers to discern meaning.

In my ex’s genetic lineage, a King of Scotland married a Pictish Princess. Her magical ways and knowledge were discarded as trite and trivial things.

Even though my husband carried both sides to this marriage, he rejected me in the same way as his ancestor’s rejecting his wife’s talents and identity, and turned away from his own artistic creativity.

I am from, and was married to, royalty – yet, what has this afforded me?

My birth father and I have had little direct contact. But, when we have, it has been startling to discover how alike we our in the genre of interests we like and personally pursue.

We enjoy a similar range of eclectic music – though vary in our extremes; we are visual creatives drawn to perspective imagery (it is rumoured he used to draw magnificent creations, while I have also manifested potential in by hand dabblings); and we are both healers and musicians in our own venturings.

All of my work has developed on its own, without his influence, so it is amazing to have us cross paths from time to time and witness how we are uniquely developing in our self expressions.

I come from both lines of fragmented families, where pioneering spirit, wildling creative talent, and a passion to claim a better destiny has driven us onward in our quests to claim true identity.

In looking back along branches of my history’s tree, it seems that I am the first to stand firm and attempt to claim gifts given, wrestling so they present in balanced clarity in temporarily-reposed snapshots of tameness.

I am proud of my ancestors, despite their mistakes and foibles, with their willful spirits courageously daring to break boundaries while tripping over societal boundaries into occasional jaunts of seeming “insanity.”

I am the first to fashion of these gypsical journeys philosophical prose and artistic musings more for the mainstream, with both of my parent’s genetic influences still clearly subconsciously nurturing – coming forth with knowledge to convey.

I am a conduit – a willing vessel – yet, also the filter and will state truth, my way.

I think about some flops I have had that were eeply, painful. I cannot gain fondness for these memories that still have a sting.

The time that I sang rubato so bold, raw, and beautiful in a jazz improvization class with the guitarist following my lead to “Cry Me A River” was amazing.

My eldest was there and got to bear witness to my passionately expressive, well executed version of it.

But, then when the class had our live show, I was not feeling well, one of the last to perform to my song, “Moon River,” and the guitarist played his own rifts for thrill of showing off without connecting with me.

People were ready to go home by then, my throat was constricted, and I was above the audience, rather than singing upward to them in projection.

It was horrible. My ex was there all night waiting and impatient. I had hoped to impress him.

At a later time I asked a fellow peer and a valued instructor to come listen to me in a practice room. Again, my voice seized and I could not perform.

Something about the importance of that moment caused my wild magic to recoil and hide itself.

I was invited to join the choir to keep practicing, but I felt too deeply embarassed..

I look back at those times with chagrin’s cringing and discouraging further efforts

Because my system does not tolerate the usual cleanses or herbal products, I have had to be discerning about sourcing particular ingredients. I absorb nutrients best if in liquid form, rather than capsules or tablets, so occasionally combine herbal supplements into a tea for enhanced absorption. Do not follow me, but find what works best for you.

Today’s odd mixture is as follows:

1 Capsule Mountain Peak Liver C
1 Capsule Nature’s Way Fenugreek
1 Capsule Nature’s Way Kidney Bladder
1 Capsule Nature’s Way Beet Root
1 Ground tablet of Planetary Herbals Triphala
1 Capsule Terry Naturally Tart Cherry
1/2 Teaspoon Cherie Sweet H3art Reishi Mushroom Powder
Opened capsule contents are mixed together in a small bowl with hot water to dissolve, then poured and stirred into 3 cups boiling water with 1 Tablespoon of molasses to drink when cooled to warming.

My fiance did not know about what happened to the ring, for I did not have the heart to tell him, once I’d arrived and became caught in the chop of others’ decisions.

In anything of importance, he kept saying to himself, “It doesn’t matter” – as if resigning himself to facts and conditioning himself to accept them.

But, every time he said and affirmed this, he erased our love and dissolved my identity: I was not important enough to fight for. Our hope was not “worth” being redeemed. Our union had no validity.

My fiance’s mother, after our first meeting and upon my first departure from Egypt, had given me her pearl ring set in a silver clover embedded with tiny diamond chips in its leaves, which surrounded the white incandescence.

On way to our second meeting, my betrothal’s soon dissolution, and tears in my retreating, the gem got caught against something in transit along airports, leaving me with an empty setting as more than an omen of what was yet to come.

Being a positive innovator, I have attempted to maneuver around the barriers to obtaining my Bachelor’s degree by continuing to refashion myself in versatile marketability.

But, when I want to go mainstream, it is always the same: I am prevented from work and passed over without this piece of paper, regardlss of my life experience qualifications.

It has become like a missing part of me, something left behind and vital to securing my representative identity.

It is the verification (like a passport) that I have done the wondrous things I claim, and with it doors may at last be opened for me.

I cannot focus on something so essential and tied into past losses that must be redeemed while hoping to build a new, intimate relationship.

The way I love is deeply and committed, where building solid understanding would come first and foremost in my life’s priority.

I don’t think it would be as difficult to portion my attentions for balance once my Bachelors is acquired and I am moving onto a Masters and other new things.

It’s just that to finish this with so much resisting is like fighting off marauding demons.

I do not have a partner already at my back and lending a hand to support me, therefore, I cannot divert energy to build a partnership when I need my limited energy to ensure I succeed.

Why do I mention this?

I have a hard time, yet again, waiting for love’s opportunity.

Maybe someday it will seek me, and I will no longer have to chase after it.

After I saw him on TV, then reviewed how I had flexed and bent to conform to another society, I realized I must set myself free – and my heart found a new place to perch, willingly.

I had not realized how constrained I had been feeling, nor how capable I have been all along as time and again I’ve proven.

I released myself from confined obligations and embraced my soul’s winsome song.

Pinging survival “go-go-go” finds itself being gently smothered with a trying-to-know-better “No” as I allow myself to catch up on sleep and go about doing simple tasks – rather than the past mad dash to aquire and ensure resources.

It is strange that I am allowing myself to coast in that momentum’s wake, seeing just how far it will take me before I am deposited (hopefully safely) where my success is reliant upon what I can personally achieve, rather than again dependent on agencies aiding.

I have been having this fantasy over the past couple of days that somehow I get the money to finish the last 12 units toward my Bachelor’s degree (plus a unit’s fee past due and some other fees) for Spring semester which begins January 11th. What would it be like to have my degree procured and its prolonged absence no longer haunting every step I attempt to make?

What would it be like to only work a couple of days during the week to keep income generating, but to get to fashion the rest of the time focused on attending put-off opportunities? And then, once complete, to begin fashioning a career focused indulgently on my own creative talents?

What I have shown here on my blog has been just a teaser to what’s still hidden inside, waiting for the chance and my own invitation to at last emerge and “put things right.”

What and who will I be? I know that ensuring my dreams taking flight is the best kind of investment – no matter what they try to sell me from the mainstream..

Add this to my personal “ambition.”

I turned down the street where the masjid is located, happy to be near it, though I no longer visit.

I tell myself it is enough that I get to be close. God knows that I am grateful, and that I am dealing with my ghosts.

I had driven to the store near there with the hot chocolate raised reading room, but alas! the shop was closed, and I wandered around, wondering how my trip was worth it.

There was a book on a shelf called, “Awakening” – usually my type of paranormal rags-to-riches, adventurous (and unlikely) love story.

I put it back. No time for such fantasy.

Then, I went downstairs to peruse the store’s protein shake options, and as I turned down the isle, an Islamic mother and her college-aged daughter were in the way because a ladder had been left where they were, crowding the entry.

They went out of their way to move aside for me, and I thanked them politely with a quiet Shukran, not sure if it was the correct thing to say.

The mother seemed to speak in excitement to her daughter, as if asking if I had just said Shukran (“thank you”) in native Arabic. I turned to greet them, warmly.

It turned out the mother had also visited Egypt and wanted to invite me to dinner. Her daughter mentioned she also sometimes needs practice with speaking English more fluently. The mother’s name was that of the mother of my once fiance, which seemed rare to me.

I felt so blessed to have met them, and told them I wanted to learn Arabic. It turned out the mother taught Arabic and wanted to learn English, so I suggested perhaps we could trade teaching each other.

It seemed we were well met, indeed, and this made me feel happy that I might be able to grow my own community, despite absence of the man of my dreams.

******

“Amazing grace, how sweet it is
That saved a wretch like me…
I once was lost, but now am found –
Was blind, (still learning to) see.”

I had not realized, but when I was fired this year in March for protecting a mother and her baby from COVID, that was the 10 year anniversary of my husband abandoning me.

I was too busy this last winter trying to not let what was happening and my fiance of over three years also leaving to reflect then upon this.

It has not mattered – the greatness I have achieved, nor the goodness enacted to near perfection. Men have betrayed and discarded me. Even my fourth father had been taunting me to leave his lodging when I was in the worst circumstances.

Today, speaking with youngest, we realized we have now arrived to where back then to over ten years ago we have wanted to be.

We have a home with our animals in a place of a real, new beginning. We can stay and/or go anywhere from here.

It was hard-earned, with too many tears – yet, not enough to clear the fears.

I guess that’s what I will be doing for awhile.

Every thing bad that happened ten years ago and since has had its own blow to my psychology.

But, the reason I haven’t recovered is because how it happened ensured my Bachelor’s being denied to me.

Federal rules changed after my husband suddenly left, my loans fell out of their grace period when kids and I became homeless, and there has been no opportunity to regain lost leveraging.

The backlash from others’ offhand decisions still damns me every time I try to improve my life’s situation.

Injustice is a brand that inflames temperance.

I did not complain, and have not complained, for setting my own interests aside for others. I have valued partnership’s love and commitment with devotion to family, and my children getting what they have needed.

But, these pursuits did not extend easy space for my own progressing to the degree I would have benefitted from. I have fought for this sacred space and felt persecuted for it. Lack of support and others’ derision has accumulated too much toxic self doubt regarding if having my dreams is valid.

I spoke by text today with a friendly woman in Algeria. She was well spoken in French, Arabic, and Berber. I want to relearn Spanish, and learn Italian, French, and Arabic. I suppose I will also need to learn German, but from past family experiences, I have some negative association.

I have found in my brief traveling through France, Germany, and Egypt that people located near the Mediterranean know several languages. This is a higher level of communication taught to them, valued and expected because they are near so many different cultures.

It has chafed my pride that Europeans see Americans as ignorant. I cannot speak well of many of our foreign nor internal policies – but, usually, whomever is in charge of running our country does not represent me. Policies are passed to keep our citizens dumb and compliant so that we may be used as corporate market feed or military numbers to promote political agendas. Higher education, for quite some time, was portioned only for the wealthy and elite.

In my time line, I have accomplished great things that others would not have expected, nor accepted as possible, and have had applicable, intuitive vision. As example, I forsaw Marine Biology and Sustainability being needed in Central Coast education, but was dissuaded from pursuing this direction by professors because my vision lacked proof’s verification. I was ten years ahead of Cal Poly’s now adjusting to mainstream.

As I arrive to current civilization’s location, it turns out to have evolved parallel to me. What I struggled to access before is now offered more freely – yet, still barred to me, financially. Having expended all grants and loans to fashion a path where none before existed, I cannot even access funds to finish my degree of only 12 more units at an accredited college online that allows me to design my own degree, incorporating most of my prior learning.

Now that I’ve been cast again into poverty, I might qualify for aid from a community program to finish locally, but this will likely set me back in years and cost to achieve, as the trend upon transferring a degree in-progress to a new university or state college adds requirement of around 25 of their own units to confer their degree.

One unit x $500. The math is not in my favor for completing, The agency might get me going, but I could be stuck without ability to complete again, even father along the journey.

i have only ONE semester full-time left to finish my degree, but not the free time or money as yet to create this reality. I cannot compete for most jobs without a Bachelor’s, and it is required to teach English professionally along standard lines of inquiry (thus, my loophole will be tutoring independently). It’s an equation I’m still working, which hinges upon having any real sense of “security” to complete.

Returning to the subject of language, here in America, we were “forced” to learn one only to graduate. Despite my efforts to try and connect dots, there would be no basis at the time for continuing this education unless one planned to travel abroad.

This was late 1980s to early 1990s, of course, before the internet connected us all more easily to people across the world, and before inter-cultural exchanging of students (for example) became more prevalent.

I had chosen to learn Spanish in hopes I could speak with my best friend’s family and partake in her culture, but their language was classic and street Mexican – what I was being taught was classic Spanish from Spain, which had little local applications!

I have envied people’s opportunities in other countries for multi-language discourse, and have felt ignorant – though not by choice – as they’ve seemed so well spoken, while American heritage seemed bent on holding those of us with higher intellect and ideals down to rote course.

If there was no local work for one’s educational interest, you were strongly dissuaded from it and met barriers. Wanting to travel abroad and learn multiple languages was seen as a pure waste of time, reserved for the upper class echelon.

How many times have I been held down and/or pushed aside because I did not have a special pre-stamp of approval? How many times did I keep going forward on my own path despite continuous counter-resistance? And now, my “age” plays into it, as life experience is still not valued here in “the States” as it should be.

It is no wonder that I arrive here confused and heartbroken. My life has been a rough journey, with only passing friends waving. No one could really join up with me, for where I have been going has never matched up with others for very long. I have been unable to identify with many.

I have always been riding that edge of succeeding or failing, precariously balanced on an unpredictable precipice with disruptive winds too ready to blow.

As I assess options, no longer sure what to believe in, I do not see clearly in which direction to go. I am a creative artist and visionary, a lover of romanticism, an in-process linguist, and many more definitions already seen and yet to be shown.

I’m what they call a definite “life learner.”

I dreamed I was driving along an open highway where traffic was sparse and scenes were in open countryside, still attached to city life and nearby to the ocean.

The colors were pure with depths rarely seen before – the kind maybe you would catch on part of a photograph, except everywhere this color in plants and atmosphere breathed life into the air.

I suddenly felt such an overwhelming sense of peace and happiness, I just threw my arms open wide when I pulled over, and beamed a huge smile of contentment as I let my eyelids relax to heavy lidded slits as all stress melted away.

I had come to a fairgound where events were underway, and had parked my car in a designated lot not far from where entrance lines were progressing.

But, instead of going in with the attendants, I sought a large climbing tree situated next to a whitewashed wall around a corner, in the shade, where I could have some privacy.

As I climbed upward to perch in the crook of great limbs, large robbins came to investigate and sing next to me as they went about their foraging.

They had black backs and red along their fronts, but they also had large black spots all over their chest and tummies, which I thought odd and amazing.

Soon, a large, brown bull meandered underneath to where my feet were hanging down, and lifted its head to sniff up at me.

He was so male and powerful, I felt he was a bit intimidating, so I only let him snuffle my feet where I could retract them quickly behind the safety of a branch above him, if needed.

I felt welcomed by the tree and animals more so directly than I have ever experienced in life or dreams, and it was as if they already knew me.

You would likely not find me directly competing with anyone, for I do not like the stress.

I would likely fashion myself a position of collaboration or supportive supplement.

Strategists say if you want to get noticed, you must market yourself.

I am then the “product” – but, I am not for sale.

Within hierarchical corporations, any place where one could seek an already substantiated career, office staff and leaders are always jockeying for status and reverence.

I am not interested in being targeted as someone to knock off of their “ladder” as they conquest.

I take my efforts and gains very seriously. They are a part of me that are not negotiable to treachery