intuition

I've got to stop looking for signs and instead make real decisions about things. Logic, something I've never been too good at. So much easier to just not think about things. Just to let things happen. Then you don't have to take responsibility for whatever goes wrong. Then you can do things that make no sense logically without feeling bad, the signs said yes.

And I'm so tired of wish-washing between things, second-guessing every decision a million times and still not knowing what to do. Just I know even the most insignificant things can change everything so much. Taking risks? Another thing I'm not very comfortable with although you might not know it. But some things have got to change. They just have to.

So, I'm swearing off of yahoo horoscopes and the magic eight ball for a while and I'm going to try to navigate this on my own. I'm going to try no signs and a tiny bit of logic, mixed with pure intuition. And we'll see what happens when that's not enough.

home ec

I signed up for Home Ec class instead of art my freshman year of high school. I think that was the end. I stopped being creative and instead learned how to follow patterns.

And, did I get good at patterns. I made a dress and wore it to Christmas dinner that year. Black crushed velvet. I found a hat that matched perfectly. Floppy black velvet with a hugh fabric rose in the front. My granny helped me make a matching flower from the leftover dress material and we pinned it to the front of my dress.

My sister took a picture of me that day. I remember thinking later that I looked prettier in that picture than I did in real life. And happier.

I made a puple dress from the same pattern. Thin cotton with tiny black flowers. I wore it to high school with my Chinese mary janes from the french quarter. What was I thinking? No one wore dresses. They wore jeans with body suits or polo shirts.

I remember right before the first day of high school my mom took me shopping for clothes. I didn't have any clothes; I was used to uniforms. We bought shorts because it was hot. They had to be to the knee to fit the dress code. I was literally the only person in the school wearing shorts the first day. I wore knee length black pleated shorts and a short-sleeved collared tie-dyed shirt with black buttons. As soon as I got there I realized I was clueless about life outside of my little Catholic middle school. But how did everyone else know? I still haven't figured that out.

People probably would have thought I was weird had I not been invisible. Really. Later when I got skinnier, prettier, and more popular people thought I was new. I could count on one hand the people who remembered the me from the first two years.

I learned in high school that fitting in was much better than being yourself. I still wonder what I would have learned had I taken art class instead.

messages

The hardest problem may have the simplest solution. Are you overlooking the obvious? (Sagittarius for November 18)

It's not that I believe in horoscopes. I don't really. But I believe in signs. If you are careful to pay attention around you, then you will hear what you need to hear when you need to hear it. Whether in your daily horoscope, on a passing billboard, a television commercial, a passage in a book you pick up, conversation overheard at a bus stop... Whatever. It's the message that counts not the messenger. The world works in mysterious ways. You just have to keep your eyes and ears open. Answers come from everywhere.

truth

I decided a while back some things about truth. I don't believe there is the truth, there are lots of truths. And the truth can change, can fragment, can falter, can splinter. Truth, like reality, is different for everyone just like it's different for moments in time. I hightlighted page 174 of my book I'm reading today because she said what I already knew in better words: Say it. If it is true to you, then it is true. Another truth may take its place later. What comes truly from me is true, whether anybody believes it or not. It is my truth.

Whenever I pick up this book and start reading, it never fails that I will find a passage that is completely comforting and validating and freeing and true. I bought it from the bookstore because (my number one reason, I hate to admit) I liked the cover. Turns out its not a how to write book, but more like a how to live. Funny how a book can make you feel less alone.

guidance

I don't know much about astrology besides liking to read my horoscope. I've not given too much thought about whether I believe in it or not, but I will say that I am always amazed by how dead on my horoscope is. At least 9 times out of 10 the profile sounds exactly like me, and usually specific preditions can be fitted exactly to something going on in my life. (Although yesterday I was supposed to have good luck in the afternoon and nothing remarkable happened, ooh, maybe figuring blogger out counts!)

Only once I got my tarot cards read in Jackson Square. It was fun. It was after 3 am on a Friday night. The guy was dressed like Louis in the Interview with a Vampire movie but wore his hair down and dark brown. He was nice, but got nothing right. I felt bad for him because I had to answer all his questions with no, or not really, or I can't think of anything that fits in there. I wanted him to be right. But he read my sister first. And it was shocking how much he revealed about her that he couldn't have known. Just chance I guess. I do believe in chance, I also believe in fate, I believe in God, I believe in signs, and in luck, and in intuition, and in going with your gut. And I believe it's up to you to make your life what you want it to be. But I guess a little guidance from the stars can't hurt.

traditions

Fall is finally, gloriously here at last and with it all the holiday things like stocking stuffers and gingerbread coffee. But the weather is the best part, walking through a wind tunnel to get to work, still only needing a light sweater, but last week sandals would have been completely appropriate so we are doing good. I walked into a store last weekend can you believe already playing Christmas songs like Here comes Santa Claus. And this is why I keep thinking to myself I can't believe Christmas is here already!, but it really isn't. The time disappears quickly enough without skipping over almost two full months.

Growing up I got so sick of the holidays, because my mom always got so into them. Every year we cut down a fresh Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, and she'd insist we all decorate it together. She made homemade ornaments with us when we were little, then as we got older she decorated the tree with different themes year after year. She'd play Christmas music non-stop from Thanksgiving to New Years. We hated it.

But when I got my own home, I started doing the same things almost without even thinking about it. Buying the stockings and ornaments and garlands for the house and collecting yearly dated ornaments to document my new life. And cd's! I wouldn't be exaggerating to say that I have over twenty holiday music cd's; the box is packed away with the decorations and lights. It took me a while to realize that I was actually collecting the songs I remembered as a child. (the little drummer boy and what child is this are two of my very favorites.)

And last year I had so much going on that I didn't get a tree, or decorate, and barely even bought presents. It was horribly depressing and made me realize how much I do love traditions.

college

The funny thing about college, I never equated the classes I took with what I wanted to be. Oh, I started out with a plan, to be a psychiatrist. But in the first semester biology lab my professor pulled me aside and urged me to reconsider my pre-med major after I almost hyperventilated from the prospect of dissecting a crawfish. (Good thing you have partners in lab and no, for some reason I didn't have to dissect anything in high school. Not even that frog anatomy computer program.) I don't even know why I wanted to be a psychaitrist, aside from a purely imagined scenerio of me in a Ally McBeal-type suit sitting across the table questioning an insane man who believed he was a werewolf. That was it.

After that, I just took classes because I wanted to get a degree. That simple. Nothing else really felt like it was actually a career possibility. In my journalism and design classes, I always felt like a fake. I thought writers and artists were just born that way, it seemed pretend to learn it in college. I felt like a fake. I felt like I wasn't good enough, even with people telling me I was. I've been horribly self-conscious my whole life. I'm just now starting to not care what people think (and, yes, I know chances are they aren't thinking about me anyway). Now I'm learning that I am a writer and I am an artist. Not because of classes I took and certainly not because of what I do for a living, but just because that's who I am. I'm learning that nobody can stop you from being who you want to be except you. And nobody can make you who you want to be except you.

elections

I absolutely hate that our presidential election is turning into a bad fad. I'm tired of people telling me who to vote for and the same goes for people telling me who they are voting for. It's not like copying a brand of clothes or shoes or how they wear their hat. I'm not going to vote for a president because my "idol" is voting for him. But I guess a lot of people will.

tea

I love things that come with random saying: fortune cookies, sodas, tea bags. My tea is getting wiser. Today it quoted Aristotle. All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire. I need to start paying attention not only to what I do but why I do it.

falling apart

What is funny today is that while everything is falling apart around me, mostly what I feel is a sense of relief. And a bit of hope.

Today the rain came down fast and hard. I left work early to catch the storm. The streets were flooded and the sky was dark and electric. The water hit my face, cold and wet. I pushed back my hair. I stared at the sky. I walked straight into it. I waded through the deepest instead of aiming for the shallow. Everything was glowing and alive. I felt watered, refreshed.