brezsny-on-the-blog

CAPRICORN (Dec 22-Jan 19): "Women are much more willing to talk about both their delights and disasters than men," says poet and workshop leader Robert Bly. I hope you men refute his assertion in the coming week, because it'll be a favorable time for Capricorns of all genders to spend quality time testifying and singing and wondering about the most vivid experiences from your past. You're liable to attract a variety of blessings if you come to new understandings about your disasters and delights. The best way to do that is to revisit them and revision them with fresh language.


have you ever had a glass of water that was just so clarifying and sensuous that you couldn't help but smile and sigh with quenched satisfaction afterward? that's exactly what this is, mr. brezsny. a clarifying and sensuous glass of cold water on a hot, glorious day.

ahh. . .

funny as it may seem, i decided to wait before writing this week's brezsny-on-the-blog. something told me i'd have fresh material if i approached it well-rested come morning. as it is, i've always had a strong intuition but no confidence, so i rarely listened to it. but the more i used it (and the more i kicked myself for hindsight) the more i realized it, too, is an ability that only grows with practice. now it's pretty unfailingly dead-on when it decides to speak.

this morning, i found a gem.

of course, my head and heart are filled with an extremely vivid experience from my freshly recent past so it's a little difficult to extracate myself from that experience enough to plunge myself into this gem of a morning, but i shall do my best. it's just that the idaho boy, who shall henceforth be forever known here at iGoddess as *m*, has blown my mind and given me a phenominal and earth-shattering experience of a lifetime and i'm still kind of reeling from the impact.

this is a Good Thing, btw.

so anyway, i logged in to my myspace account this morning and found an anonymous email from someone who had no profile picture. the email was titled "i'll be honest," and it was from someone whose name was "someone you know."

now, while i never reply to these emails i receive (because i'd get nothing else done all day), i always open them and read them so i can then share the humourous stupidity of fucktards with *cc*, because hey, sometimes a good chuckle at a fucktard is just entertaining. for the most part, they're always some version of the same:

"hey, i checked out your profile and saw you like pink floyd/anime/whatever. holla back and we'll chat." or,

"i saw your profile and you're absolutely gorgeous. then i saw you like pink floyd/anime/whatever, and that's awesome. i've never met anyone so amazing. plz write me back and get to know each other." or,

"hey, iGoddess. be my goddess, and i'll be your god."

*rolls eyes* i'm not joking. i've received messages like this, and many, many more. i delete them all.

as it stands, the song on my profile used to be "comfortably numb," but after nineteen consecutive emails from guys on myspace, anonymous or otherwise, i've since changed it to morcheeba. not many people have heard of them, they're freaking awesome, and i stopped getting so many come-ons from pink floyd fans. sheesh. can't a girl like pink floyd and not be randy for whatever comes along?

anyway, this letter was different. i opened it, and it had only one line: i can't get over you. how's that for a kick in my ass.

my first thought was *j*, actually, which i immediately dismissed. he'd never be such a coward as to hide behind anonymity, and he'd never use myspace. so it wasn't him. and even then, he'd never admit whether he could get over someone or not. he'd just bottle it up until he imploded, as he's done with so many things over, and over, and over. he never learns. in retrospect, i'm dang lucky i narrowly avoided that disaster. that poor man's got no Funk, but i hope he finds it one day.

so i opened up another window and checked out the profile, even though i knew what i'd find. it was a generic profile hastily built, with only Tom in the friends section, no info, no "about me," no pictures. the age was 29 years old, the location "somewhere, oregon." status single, zodiac sign pisces.

the oregon location was bogus, but someone with lack of imagination enough to hide behind anonymity wouldn't have enough imagination to conceal their age. and as for pisces, i'd only ever been with one pisces. but my brain couldn't wrap itself around the concept of that person emailing me out of the fucking blue after ten years to tell me this. and i'll explain what i mean.

of all the men in my history, there is one who comes second only to my bio-father in his cruelty, abuse, and heartless, egocentric destruction of my fundamental spirit which i've since had to rebuild. that was *jd*, my first love. it's true. until we learn otherwise, we always fall for someone similar to the same-sex parent in our lives. *jd* was my bio-dad, only tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, and the more he destroyed me, the more i felt i had to earn his love.

well, we're all young and stupid at some point.

so anyway, i write back about the pointlessness of emails with statements such as this without knowing who the person is. of course, i get an immediate reply about feeling uncomfortable revealing their identity. "you're still gorgeous as ever, though. you still have that 'look'," they wrote.

now, as much as i love a good intrigue and my romantic heart can't resist mystery, i have no patience for drama. my time's far too valuable, and i'm not going to beg. but this only strengthened my belief it was *jd*, because only he ever used the phrase "gorgeous as ever" with me. but, of course, i wasn't going to presume. someone as self-absorbed as he is couldn't possibly hold a torch for someone who is still too bullheaded not to tell him exactly like it is, exactly as i see it. he could never handle that about me.

last year, i did get an email out of the blue from him apologizing for hurting me all those years ago. i didn't respond, and his wife emailed me, of all people. ironically, she and i became fast friends, and we still email back and forth. she's a total sweetheart, but i also can tell she's someone more suited to his ego. very unlike my tell-it-like-it-is, no-surrender-no-retreat stubborn independence. but after a few emails back and forth with him (since, as i'm always inclined to do, i gave him a second chance), i realized nothing ever changed. he's still the same narcissistic egoist, so close-minded he had to resort to insulting my paganism and name-calling. so immature.

"i'm terrified to tell you. it's risky for me to even be talking to you," said the next email. oh christ on a crutch, enough with the drama and manipulation! i'm not going to beg. besides, i was getting hungry, and i'd already spent ten minutes on this. so i wrote, "*shrug* you'll tell me if and when you want to. until then, i've got lunch to start making, so i'll talk to you later, maybe."

when people try to manipulate you and are seeking for you to beg information out of them, the best thing to do is not care and walk away. see if they don't trip over themselves and their own tongue to tell you what they're dying to tell you anyway. they just want to have the power, to make you beg. don't give them what they want, and you hold all the cards.

yeah, baby.

so i go and make myself some lunch. forty minutes later i return to find i'd actually received an instant reply. like, as in the very same minute. myspace emails have time stamps. at 09:00 i wrote that i was gonna go make lunch. and at 09:00 i received a reply.

it's all about power, and refusing to be manipulated.

sure enough, i was right. it was *jd*. i laughed out loud. so i asked him why. just...why tell me now, after a whole freaking decade, unless something's happened and he just has to ease his own conscience. i mean, i was finally over him completely (i carried around the pain of his abuse for years) when i realized that, talking with him, nothing ever changed. he was as big an ass as ever, and we still broke our skulls butting our heads together. why waste my time giving someone like that validation, carrying around the pain he caused as if he mattered?

so i dumped the baggage, and the Jiggy Snake went, "Wee!"

his reply? "it has been eating me for 10 years. i thought it would go away with time, but it just stays there. i'm sorry if i hurt you in our more recent exhanges. it doesn't matter much, but i had to get it off my chest. i'll probably never be over you."

now, pronoia is a path, a calling, a process neverending. and while i have much Funk and have come far as a revolutionary freedom fighter for truth, beauty, freedom, and love, i'm happy to report that i'm not so advanced a part of me isn't going, "GOOD! stew in it, sucker, just stew!"

but instead, i said i was long and well over him. and then, because i am a practiced pronoiac and am One with my Funk, i told him to get himself together and live well.

and so, let's revise my second greatest destruction with new language. if fear is a bad habit, despair is lazy, and all of creation wants me to succeed, then how does this fit in with the knowledge that the universe is a prodigious miracle created for my amusement and illumination and is always giving me exactly what i need exactly when i need it?

well, back then, i seriously needed a wake-up call. my soul was asleep, and the magic wand that put me under a nineteen years-long sleeping spell was the baseball bat held by my bio-dad. looking at it with a mythic eye, he struck at my legs. where better to paralyze me to keep me from escaping? he'd always wanted to keep me in a cage...

i've since learned that men in love with power have none of their own and tend to be threatened by those with free spirits whose very nature threatens their coveted supremacy. something about others having naturally what they must gain by force and keep with violence. i was wild and irrepressible as a child, and after the Baseball Bat Incident took me nineteen years to learn how to be so again. at fifteen years old, i was still struggling against my sleeping spell, and *jd* would have none of it. and thus, what my bio-father began, *jd* completed.

i forgive them. i mean, i forgave both of them a long time ago. they're just human beings, imperfect and fallible, good souls who just learned to search for and express the right things in the wrong way. i hope one day they both find their Funk. i pray it be so. i wouldn't be a revolutionary freedom fighter if i didn't.

but i misinterpreted what the universe gave me at the time. it was giving me a second chance, a resounding alarm clock intended to wake me up to the tyranny of my bio-dad, but my body-memory recognized it as reinforcement of the original attack.

even still, the universe gives us exactly what we need exactly when we need it. secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist us into turning into the gorgeous masterpieces we were born to be. an ancient japanese proverb about patience says "if you wait long enough by the river, eventually the bodies of your enemies will float past you."

today, as i sat upon the banks watching sunlight play over the curious ripples and waves of a glorious river sparkling like diamonds, i saw *jd*'s body float right past me. interestingly enough, my first reaction wasn't joy. it wasn't vindication, nor was it satisfaction, or pleasure, or scorn. it was a sort of nothing tinged with sadness. how much it must suck to be him, carrying around all that baggage, being driven by some self-destructive need to tell me after all these years, thereby risking his marriage to a wonderful girl, his life with two children, a job, school... why mess that up? i wonder what the universe is giving him? something he needs exactly when he needs it, most likely, which to me sounds like a swift kick in the ass. after all, that's what he said in his first message, isn't it?

"how's that for a kick in my ass?"

now, having revisited that particular disaster, let's measure that against my most recent delight. 5'9, striking blue eyes, gentle hands and masterful wit, with a sharp intelligence and quick tongue to pose the challenge i've been searching for my whole life. a generous and subtle heart that shares many of my same values, and a sense of humor that only appreciates and encourages my own. he even likes my sanchez nose.

*grin* well, all i can say about *m* is that the universe conspires to shower us with blessings, and is always giving us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.


[post script: speaking of stupid messages via myspace, i just now received one from some guy named kenny. "may i sex you?" he says. what a 'tard.]