The New Normal in the Triciasphere

When you're working with the Law of Attraction, one of the things you learn is that we get that to which we give our attention, focus and energy.  So if you're dating, as I used to be, and so focused on not getting stuck with another asshole that all you do is endlessly rerun scenes of past assholery in your mind, you can be certain you will be going out with another asshole (or asswhole, as my friend Woody calls a complete and total asshole https://www.facebook.com/asswholery).

I know about this Law of Attraction stuff as a result of taking a few workshops with my friend and former coach,  Max the psychic life coach and hairdresser.  He doesn't do hair much anymore since he's successful as a life coach and spiritual teacher, so I consider myself very fortunate indeed that he still nurtures my inner beauty with Miss Clairol - and he's really very effective at showing how we get what we vibrate, and I'm not talking about the rabbit habit by Vibratex, regardless of what all the materialist philosophers have to say about hippy dippy airy fairy new age thinking.  I'm talking about one's conscious orientation, our responses and reactions, toward material conditions.

Woody has convinced me that Free Will is a time-honored tactic the Owners use to exert control over the Workers, generally at church but plenty of folks are happy happy happy to say poor people are poor   because of their poor choices while declaring they are well-off (or obscenely wealthy) because they are superior in every way, as if they chose to be privileged and poor people chose to live on the street, for example.  But even though the notion of Free Will is bullshit, in my view, we absolutely do have local autonomy here inside our material conditions.  I can choose to be loving and chill, or I can choose to be a condemning AssWhole.
Namaste, Motherfuckers.

No one can wake up one morning and free will him or herself out of a dreary day trudging from a dingy apartment to a dismal job and into a bunaglow over the turquoise sea in Bora Bora.  But we can all look on our neighbors in elevators, on subway platforms and in line at the grocery store with kindness and notice all the little ways there is abundance around us.  Once you start noticing everything that's going right instead of dwelling on what's going wrong, you're not trudging through a dreary day anymore.  You start to believe in the possibilities instead of the obstacles and the next thing you know, you're co-creating your life, as they say, which means you can spruce up your own environment.  Who knows, with enough focus, attention and flexibility, you might even wind up in Bora Bora after all.  Once you start going after a Feeling instead of attaching yourself to a Form - you might find that everything you imagined you'd find in Bora Bora was in South Carolina, of all places.  Once you've freed your mind and are feeling the possibilities (that would be Vibrating at a higher frequency), the universe responds to your vibe.  Positive or Negative, just like a magnet.  You're going to pull something toward you, whether you see it or not, so you might as well start looking at what's coming toward you and catch the good stuff (that would be the Abundance).

I confess that the first time Max asked a few of us in his tele-class to notice abundance, all I noticed in my life was an abundance of Bullshit.  I'm happy to say that with practice, I have learned to face the bullshit with equanimity and in the process, have noticed a lot of beauty.  Every now and then, I record the evidence of beauty because sometimes it helps to have a reminder.  Jennifer Morrison at realia introduced me to the idea.

Nearly everyone I've met is aware that I left no stone unturned in my quest for a domestic partner, and Max suggested I write a couple of paragraphs about my ideal mate.  I decided to focus my attention on the First Man in the New Apartment because my ideal mate seemed like much too much to request.  The First Man, I could imagine - and I imagined he'd have long term potential. Then, I took the Desire Statement idea a step farther by copying the statement onto a teeny piece of paper, burning the paper into ash, mixing the ash in a tiny bottle then pouring it the Hudson River.  I also poured it into the shrubbery at the Heather Garden.

When I was writing, I focused on how I wanted to feel with this man instead of any specific picture - but I did say that I was glad to know the man's busy career was behind him so he had time for the relationship.  Pouring the ashes into the water and into the earth was my way of putting the whole thing out of my mind and allowing the Universe to do its part.  I suppose some might say I asked God to send me a financially stable man who was about to retire, and God sent me an unemployed communist.  All I can say is that's kind of how it is with God, and it doesn't do anyone any good to get attached to a form.  Max says that's like giving the waiter your order then going back into the kitchen to tell the chef how to do his/her job.

Whatever - Pinko's days as The First Man have come and gone.  He's the one and only man now, and he's no longer unemployed.  He works so much he's hardly ever home anymore.  Twelve hour shifts with an hour commute each way is bad enough, but many days he works over 13 hours.  I'm thinking he should cut back to four days a week pretty soon, maybe down to three in the summer.  We'll see.

Naturally, we're going to Burning Man again this summer, and as Pinko often says, "Burning Man doesn't pay for itself." We even got our tickets before the regular sale since Sideshow is an officially recognized, stand-alone theme camp in partnership with our new neighbors, Midnight Popcorn Palace:

Sadly, the day we had to purchase our tickets, I had an attitude about Burning Man.  In fact, I still have kind of an attitude because going to Burning Man is a lot of pressure.  I like Burning Man well enough, but it doesn't feel like vacation.  It feels like a relentless relationship trial by fire, literally.  We're not going to be on the Esplanade this year - which I must admit was pretty nice, if you have to go to Burning Man.  And I did like having Celestial Mechanica across the street.  Pinko says that our new spot in the Three O'Clock plaza is just as cool, or maybe even cooler.

But honestly, for someone who is often socially awkward, the level of intimacy required with so many new people is often hard to manage.  Living in a giant tin can with Pinko is kind of hard to manage, too.  The first year was different because I was determined to greet the situation with equanimity so I overlooked his housekeeping.  Last year was trickier since he resisted my effort to assert my need for domestic order.  He couldn't believe I'd be inside doing housework while everyone else was having fun, but I have more fun when I know that once I go out, I won't be tripping over dirty laundry when I get home.  There's so much else to trip on, I don't want to get tripped up in the living room.

I freely admit that Burning Man facilitates personal growth, by encourages playful creativity and evolving experimentation with community.  One day I might even write about Burning Man as Curriculum for enhancing adult understanding of Art and Community - but it doesn't feel like vacation. It feels like professional and personal development, with particular emphasis on Self in Relationship.  I still have a bit of an attitude about the work and resources involved in going to Burning Man, but there's really no point complaining about being obliged to go to Burning Man.  It's entirely too silly.  For the purposes of my job, however, I believe I will continue to act like it's an obligatory family reunion with my in-laws.

In the meantime, I'm rapidly growing accustomed to having long stretches of time to myself again.  I miss my bear, for sure.  He's very tired when he comes home, and he wakes up very early so that he can be in Queens by 6:00am.  I've been a little tired too because I've been getting up to cook him breakfast and fix his lunch, and this whole routine is still so new that I enjoy showing off.  Yesterday, I made bacon and scrambled eggs with sautéed mushrooms, caramelized onions and provolone.   Lunch today was a pita stuffed with leftover chicken fingers, romaine and avocado.  Mostly, though, I make him some roll-ups from roast beef and goat cheese and give him a pear.  He likes pears.

I'm just about to make dinner - homemade chicken curry pot pie and kale sautéed with bacon, apples and onions.  I like cooking dinner for two, and he likes coming home to lovely smells in a warm kitchen.  He likes it so much that he got a teary the other night.

I suppose that we look more traditional now that he's got a commute and I'm making him a sammich, even if the insurance company does call him a sponsored male.  Or maybe we don't look typical at all since I'm cooking in the middle of the night and he's chauffeuring around minor celebrities, writers, producers and other media types.  I'm thinking we might be Bohemians, since he's a communist and I'm an emergent writer.  I'm reading at KGB in 10 days - that should count for something.

Maybe we attracted each other - or he manifested from all that soggy ash I poured into the Hudson.  Not long ago, I found one of the drafts of the desire statement I wrote about the First Man and showed it to him.  He was surprised at how closely he matched the man I had in mind.  Certainly the way our lives fit together exactly matches the feeling I was hoping to find when I started focusing some serious attention on finding my mate.  I'm still not 100% convinced anyone ever attracts or manifests anything.  It seems much more likely that if we articulate our intentions and desires very clearly in our own minds, then we're finally able to see that for which we are searching when it presents itself.  Kind of like Dorothy finding her heart's desire in her own back yard.  I never thought that Burning Man would wind up being part of my back yard, though.  In any case, we're pretty cozy up here in Harlem this winter.  It seems to be our new normal.
Blessed Be.