Dear Universe,
I am not sure where to start this letter but I’ll just give it a go.
I guess I‘ll begin with gratitude. To be part of you, to be open to you, to be you Universe, that indeed is a great gift and I give thanks. But to be grateful doesn’t always mean I don’t the have some questions.
Like why?
I mean why for instance tonight? After a mellow weekend of letting the kids make a mess, with markers and clay, no less, and leaving dish after dish in the sink, and then BBQ-ing and making a bigger mess, does someone call and want to look at the house? At 7pm on a holiday? Why? And then of course the ritual begins. Kids in front of a movie make my magical house selling brew (in a pot of water: whole cloves, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods and vanilla and put on the stove to boil). I start at the back of the house and B starts in the front. I am huffing and puffing and sweating like a pregnant pig, and then at some point we cross over and I am in front and he is in back. We double check each other. The counters get cleared, the dishes thrown in the dishwasher along with already clean ones so tomorrow I won’t know what the hell is clean or dirty and I end up cleaning double or we eat off dirty. The sink gets scrubbed, the windows quickly washed, the floors swept and spot mopped, the table cleaned and set. Toys back in their homes, clothes lying around to be put away are hidden somewhere (in baskets or the dryer, clean ones mixed with dirty again, so I never know which is which) pillows are fluffed. Mirrors cleaned. Toilets quickly cleaned and flushed. All lights on. Candles lit. Everything that needs to be vacuumed gets vacuumed. Backyard tidied i.e. pick up Mia’s underwear and clothing thrown like a garden across the grass, sippy cups reeking of sour milk and dog crap all go). Kids dressed. Jump in the car. Hope that this is The One. This time around, we barely got the kids and the dogs in the truck, backed out of the driveway and took a moment to discuss where we’d go; dog park or gelato, when the potential buyers came walking out of the house. Done. In about 7 minutes. Over 1 hour of cleaning for a 7 minute showing to a woman who probably wants a Toll Brothers track house in the first place. Why?
In the whole greatness, never-ending of your presence, Universe, I understand that I am just a speck of nothingness. Transparent nothingness. But at the same time I am intricately the same as you: I am you. And so I just wonder what this is all about. I figure if I am indeed you and you are me, then one of us must have some understanding of something, right? I mean, we did our homework, fixed this place, and priced it right. We buried Saint Joseph facing east (or should it have been north?) We made our goddamn board (fuck that stupid ass Secret movie. You cannot relay ancient teaching and mysticism in a low budget self-help video without it loosing the point.). We mantra until are throats are raw everyday, feeling each seed syllable exchange from belly to throat to air. We believe in the power of our souls dancing in conjunction with the stars. Are we just fooling ourselves? Do you run on a non-system of utter chaos and like chips, we get tossed up and our lives fall where they may in randomness? Or are we pre-destined? Our lives mapped and planned and pinned down to exactness and no matter what we want we better just take what we get and follow that lead? If change happens, does it have nothing to do with our own will? Or do we actually have a say here? My Great and Endless Friend, can we reel in what we are called to, can we journey towards the sparks reflecting in our eyes, moving and shifting our energetic fields? Be who we want to be? Be the architects of our own life? Or are we players in someone else’s game?
Perhaps we have not learned all we needed to learn here, in this current situation of a house for sale and literally aching to move. Is that it? Is this some big test? It is because we are utter amateurs when it comes to budgeting finances and keeping records in order? Is it because we have given up too easily on this hot-rock where one of us goes to work and one of us stays home and weekly trips to the gelato shop and a quick peak into a box of sex toys get us off and a splurge here and there keeps us content and a trip north once a month to camp Pines should be just fine for us? Is it because I still can’t control my impulses and sometimes I scream really loud? Is it because I still have not figured out when the time is right to change the oil on my car and I drive on E for days? Is it because we have little patience for ignorance? Is it because we think moving will bring happiness and happiness is truly only within? And we should not crave anything or want anything ever? Or at least expect to get anything in return? I can see my issues, Universe. I know what they are. I like to run and run all over the place when I get bored. I detach and run. But I am not running. As a matter of fact I’d like to take my time and make it a long and leisurely drive to my new destination of choice. Is it because my feet burn like embers and to breath deeply on makes me ache more to fly? But I swear, it really is only to spread some kind of seed, to deliver something in service. Don’t ask me what yet I just know it’s time.
Do I sound desperate?
Do I want too much? Am I asking when I should just be giving? I am surrounded by so much love and compassion and creative energy and blessings through people and material things than most will ever see and I know that and I am sorry if I am being selfish about wanting something else. Because I am grateful for it all. But there was this moment, when I met my husband and we found out we had the same dreams, those dreams continued and less than a year ago we both came to each other, on the same day and said: We want to go North. And West. And that was that. We knew the time had come to continue with those dreams. I am just one who sees something and goes after it especially when that something, ultimately, is a dream to serve others. We have some plans, you know, Universe, and I know you can’t “plan” but you know what I am talking about. Those plans were given to me through you; looking up at the stars from atop mountains and looking at people’s eyes through campfires. I knew my path then and something about moving is that path. I have always aimed my centaur arrow and shot the bull’s eye, the first try. This missing the target and needing to wait thing is something new to me. And I will be honest, beyond all life plans with my partner and kids, I will admit, I live for the adventure and experience. Some people can live 1 or 2 places their whole lives…and I see the beauty in that, I really do, and I wish I could be still, but it’s not me. No, my feet move. They yearn to dance from place to place. Plus there is a real live kicking baby inside our Inner Universe. This baby needs a home, a place to come out, and a fireplace to lie down next to the first night of its life. Time is of the essence in this situation. I am pregnant and I can’t slow that process down. I still happens while I sit, waiting. Attracting.
Or is that it? Is this place I am to stay? Did we sell our souls when I cut off my husband’s natty hair that one day and sold my dream art and yoga center to the first person who wanted it and we put our creative existence on hold and said: we must go now and own a house? Get a “real” job (one that apparently judges you on your hairstyle) and pay bills? Live in a sleepy and materialistic suburb in the middle of the goddamn desert and be responsible? Or in our own words: Go Under Cover? Did we sell our souls then? Should we have trusted? Had faith in who were at that moment and stayed, despite the pressure we felt to become something other than what we were? I don’t like to question things after it’s done, it’s just not our style, and we did have faith and trusted; in the decision to move here for no longer than three years, but in times like these it’s hard not to look behind me and wonder why this is taking so long? Big Universe, did we make a mistake? Did we hold things of no value way too highly? Like money and homeownership? Because I mean, money burns under fire and homes, they sit on land that belongs to the Earth, not me. Did we want some false security and sheltering for our kids and in that we left behind the real lessons? If that is the case and being force to stay here and embrace this new kind of struggle, where my karma returns, just tell me now okay. Spare me the details so I can stop cleaning my house.
Though it does seem like I want a lot I swear I don’t claim to know a lot. As a matter of fact, I know nothing and that’s why I feel so comfortable wandering and exploring and asking you all this. I sat still for a while now, over three years and have learned the same lesson I always learn: I know nothing. I know nothing about birth or death or life in between. I know nothing about parenting or what lies within any situation. I do not know what is right or wrong. I am not wise. But I have to ask, are my desires some kind of false knowing that I must let go of? Is that it? How do I let something go that seems to truly dwell in my heart? I have remained unattached every time I have to scrub the house on a moments notice. I clean each surface and pay attention to each wipe I make, loving the house and cleaning it just for the sake of cleaning it. I try so very hard not to clean for any outcome, for any result except to just feel that I am cleaning and that dirt is coming off. And by just cleansing, I almost enjoy it (though I would enjoy eating chocolate or playing paint with my kids or taking a yoga class much more). I learn how perfect and simple it can feel to just wipe away dried milk of off the table or shine little painted fingerprints of a window or leftover gunk stuck on the stove. I smell my own mix of vinegar and lemon and soap, and enjoy the freshness of it. I sweat and clean for the sake of it all. I try not to expect the cleaning or the ritual that goes on with it is going to get me anywhere.
But when I put a For Sale sign in front of my house and get over forty people walking through abso-fucking-lutely loving it, then I do expect someone to but it. Or at least make in offer.
So why? What I am doing or not doing that I need to do or not do? Is this just the luck of the draw that I pick to sell my house in the slowest market in years? I feel like luck has always been on my side; Jupiter is my guide, my planet. So doesn’t someone out there need a house, not for the whole real estate game of things, but just a place to live? It’s a good home, I like it. It feels right inside, lived in yet clean and open and it smells good. Maybe there are a few flies here and there and maybe the floors are a bit water-stained in a couple places and perhaps the roof droops a bit, but it’s a lovely little place. My husband built the bookshelves with his own hands and we carefully picked out small touches with such love and hope. Granted, not on a big budget, or a budget at all, but we did it. And it looks good. Well, to us at least. But we are not those who like “perfection”. The track home aesthetic is not what we are about. I like a croaked floor and a little chipped paint. I like realness. This house is real. Where are the real people here? Universe, SEND THEM ASAP. PLEASE.
I am obviously missing some point, aren’t I? I am racking my brain to put myself in your place, Universe. What is it that I am meant to give, or take, or act upon before I can draw a buyer? Or if nothing, and there is no individual or universal truth that I am meant see flash by me for a moment, the why? Why? Why? Why? Is my cup full? As my husband says to me don’t empty it, just be an expanding cup, one that can never be filled. I am trying to expand, endless and open. I am falling, I will admit, falling into doubts and judgments about myself and my choices. I am loosing patience. But I catch myself. I do. Isn’t that the point? To catch the self and plant the feet down and let the heart open once again? To feel patient. Because in those moments where I playing with my girls, pretending that I am a vendor at the fair selling them a ticket for a ride or the lady at the market selling them tomatoes, or when I smell their little kid breath in the morning, I could be wherever with them forever. I can find the patience.
I am trying to live each moment instead of counting them. I have embraced this heat like it’s a cool breeze. I have sat in the sun and felt it ripen my skin. I have tried to stay out of petty relationships. I have tried scrimping and saving and I have tried, spending freely, giving my money away even when there was none to give. I have tried sitting still and doing nothing and I have tried getting out there and marching across the whole ground. I have tried to be a present and conscious mother and lover and friend. Part of this consciousness to move is for my kids and my lover. He grew up on the sea, and I feel how landlocked he is, how lonely he is and how different he is from most people here. He deserves to be in a community where he feels comfortable. I think it’s harder for him than for me, and of course he is more patient in the long run. And for my kids? There is some deep mother knowing that tells me my children are subtly guiding me out of the desert. They want a life of running through yards and spending hours lost in tide pools searching for crabs and playing in the rain and the snow.
Can I ask again? Why? Why all this over a simple thing? Sell house. Move. Experience newness. . Why and what? I am expanding and listening with my whole body. What I hear is that I just can’t rush this. And to trust. I hear that I have to trust even more.
I know that moving is just an idea, and it’s not a truth. I will accept what is given. But I can’t help but to explore and think I have other options, choices even. Until then, I explore here, in these words. I explore daily with my children. I continue not to know anything, Universe, but can you just speak louder with your guidance. I truly need it.
So instead of asking you why again, I will just listen. As a matter of fact, I just heard you say something else to me and I felt it with every body part. I will surrender to it all, especially to this question: Why.
(But don’t expect me not to have a break-down again soon and don’t be surprised if you get another long-winded rant in the near future. It’s all I have to pass this time.)
Bless up and Big up, Universe,
MB
