'My Brother Jordan'; Impacted by a Documentary About a Young Man I Didn’t Know

         Just to give you an indication of where I'm going with this, the original title of this post started with the word, "Appreciation". I’ve been changed by a documentary I found on YouTube. If you’ve been deeply impacted by a doc about an individual, I’d love to hear from you; I’d like to see what you learned and how you have changed your life based on it, because this is an intense, uncommon experience for me, and I’m gonna gush now about an influential young man I never knew:

            Jordan Robinson.

            I’m so thankful to the filmmaker behind this, Justin Robinson. As he put it, this movie was [“about a brother, by a brother”], and I can’t imagine how difficult and/or therapeutic it was to make, but without the film, there would be one less lovely testament to Jordan out in the world, which some of his loved ones might lean on to help with their grief, and selfishly, I’m glad for the movie’s existence because I got the chance to learn from it.

Finally Assertive, Or "About This Dream I Had (Young Man)"

          It was about a young man, an immigrant. I never learned what his first language was and by the time I heard him speak, he sounded American-raised (and thankfully, this was a dream, so I could get away with turning around to be his audience for what felt like minutes plural). He didn't know anybody when he moved to town, so short, so skinny, in baggy athleisure, with truly icky hair choices. 

          You know when someone's hair is really short, but still styled in a questionable way that makes you think, 'It deserves so much better'? I know you've heard me go on and on about acceptance and patience and my pursuit of non-judgment, and everything I've said is what I'm really up to, but I have moments of choosing my old ways and...here I go, being catty, because...this hair. It involved skinny pieces of hair pointed down his forehead as if he didn't understand what "bangs" or "fringe" means. Sure, the look wasn't nearly as interesting as the live tree-as-accessory I depicted in a previous post, but here at No Matter Where You Go, There You Are, I don't try to outdo myself, I just shine light on the weird elaborate metaphors, and this guy was indeed a metaphor.

Bananas! My Visit to 'Season of Warhol'

          My mom's a talented artist and recently, she had a painting to drop off to Rochester Contemporary Art Center as part of an upcoming exhibition, so she kindly invited me to come along. She was all, “I could get us tickets to Andy Warhol!”, which, for each of us, is an offer that’s quite hard to resist, so I said yes (I mean, duh), and the trip introduced me to other impactful, fantastic work. Partway through my time in the Memorial Art Gallery, I started thinking about sharing notes with you on what I saw. I’m including images! Also, there were long conversations with my wonderful mom who threatened to abandon me in that city, far from home, only four times!

Did I make it home? Click to find out!...Or check your pantry. I’m on a kick that involves late night rendezvous with a tub of creamy peanut butter and a spoon.

About These Dreams I Had in the Same Month (Lemon Ink, Blonde Poet)

The following dreams occurred on November 8th and 19th respectively.

 

          Rudeness, body art, fruit! And afterward, just because I feel like it, I share one of my new favorite shows with you, starring two funny, beautiful drag performers! Please join me!

 

I Admire Lorelai Gilmore

This fanhood is recent and not devout. Please know that; it’s important that I be honest, considering how many hardcore fans “Gilmore Girls” had when it was on cable.

Back then, long before streaming, I didn’t watch it, wasn’t a fan, especially not of Rory’s entitlement, ‘cause she and I were just too different for me to relate,  in addition to the fact that to a degree, immaturity created and encouraged a self-absorption and a lack of thoughtful patience that could have given me room to like her. I liked Lorelai better and would have loved to make out with a younger clone of Luke.

The four-part Netflix revival was a different experience. Everybody was older now. I was compassionate about Rory’s lost, immature behavior and appropriately uncomfortable at moments that struck me right in my own bullshit, which made me feel better, because I could use those moments to remind myself of how much of my authentic power, talent and maturity was waiting for my self-imposed boundaries to be moved out of the way.

 

Huh. I started that previous paragraph wanting to write about Lorelai and here I am. Well. These days, I see a couple of things in the elder Gilmore girl that may well reflect who I am now because, in a way, that character was a late bloomer and I certainly (intentionally) have been one myself, which is a truth I used to not voice aloud out of shame that I now would like to wear proudly, albeit quietly, maybe wit a pin on my jean jacket that looks like a Pop Tart. I haven’t planned it out yet.

As a gift on my thirty-second birthday, I was given a ring that blatantly resembles a blue Ring Pop candy. That’s the closest I get to Lorelai’s Hello Kitty-themed waffle iron.

 

Ever Heard of Grounding/Earthing? Let's Go Do It.

          Are you a fan of walking around barefoot? Do you water your plants or check the mailbox shoeless about as much as weather permits? After playing in the yard with your kid or your dog, do you feel any different? And do you think a person could benefit from spending a lot of time barefoot in the grass or sand?

 

13 Things I Like About Being Alive

          This list is in no particular order and it’s a way of practicing gratitude, which is something I need to work on in order to feel good, take less for granted and have an easier time manifesting the positive achievements I want/need.

           

 

About This Dream I Had (I Carried a Dead Thing)

          This dream was had on the morning of either Sept. 22 or 23.

 

          I made the mistake of choosing to not write down this dream immediately after waking, so hours later, I of course didn't remember much, though the scene was fuller than many other dreams I've had, which I'm sure is the result of my Higher Self getting involved. There was more atmosphere when I suddenly was in the home of some friends I don't know in real life - three sisters, one brother - and I was drawn to one of the sisters most because she had an air about her that said we could have intellectual discussions, I could learn, maybe even open up my optimism, standing more often in the headspace where, to quote a cliché, "The world is your oyster."

 

Poem: "Cards"

Though that is just the working title. I'm also considering, "Be the Eight of Cups".

 

About This Dream I Had: Uneasiness, a Job Search and a Dream Militia

          What I remember now of the dream this morning is that I was working on something with a guy I used to know, a neighbor of a friend of mine, and this guy was goodhearted with so much potential but was awfully immature for his age, which often made him an annoyance, and he moved out of that building, like, a year and a half ago, so it surprised me to recall seeing him in my dream, and soon after that scene was over, my imagination had moved on to some darker alternate universe that had me hiding in an unfamiliar house under one or two heavy blankets in a corner of the front room, shades drawn, because I just didn't have time to bolt for a room toward the back of the house with the faceless older man who found us this house to begin with. He had been partway out of the room, headed for the hall when the front door flew open and let in what I assume was a militia, dressed all in black riot gear, shielded helmets protecting most of their faces from me. Two men in the front didn't obscure their faces, though, and one barked orders at the man who had been trying to help me, while the other looked over at the pile of blankets in the corner and, fearful, I accidentally made eye contact. My response was to flop some heavy, dark-colored blanket over my head, as if that would convey the message that I wouldn't try to describe him to any dissidents, due in large part to the fact that he, like the men behind him, currently had a long firearm in his hands. I was afraid that I was now going to be shot to death. Up until the moment I awoke at 11:22 a.m., lying on my arm in such a way that it felt amusingly numb, Dream Me was still alive.

          I think I can tie those two memories together in the following way...

I Don’t Like Your Mom (Confronting My Own Defensiveness)

          

            Sometimes, just sometimes, she gets on my nerves. It can irritate me to the point of shifting in my chair, looking around the room, fantasizing about escaping with the excuse of heading “to the bathroom”, but please know that I haven’t yet made that escape during a visit because I realize that this other person isn’t at fault entirely, if at all.

            (Oh! That’s right, I’m sorry, I forgot – My friend’s name is Meaghan and we’re gonna call her mom Lena.)

            Lena seems to me like she’s quite confident, which has to be a key part of her close, special friendship with her daughter, but I personally find her to be a little too pushy. It’s understandable that if you combine this with other details, Lena and I are just very different people who would not associate if it weren’t for the wonderfully nerdy Meaghan, and we only see each other every once in a while, anyway, so when Lena pisses me off, I have more than one reason for keeping my mouth shut, and instead of being immature, overreacting and blaming her, I remind myself to accept the challenge that these moments present.

A Later Sunday: Anti-Climactic Next Chapter in a Move

      Previously on…

      I started writing a book of essays. Later, I made out with Kim Kardashian, saw Santa and ate paste, all within dreams. There began a phase of increased creativity and Pilates. I announced on this small blog that I would be apartment-hunting. My chocolate Labrador friend Pluto seems to have a crush on me while I have a crush on a being who’s over 600 years old. Also, I'll talk briefly about how I communicated with a plant.

Men in Black Don't Have Beards

     

Worst headache of my life happened when I awakened somewhere within the compound at Area 51. Obviously, I escaped with my life, never got my ship back.

Some men don't like it if you try to braid their large beard and hang ornaments in it. That's a shame, right?

I passed out on the bathroom floor at Dan Harmon’s house.

Nandor the Relentless(ly Goofy)

            I have a new crush. I'm gonna talk about him and I'm gonna cuss. Okay?

Okay. Well, I have friends who aren’t gonna be excited about this, because

A)     One of them has been hoping that I’d get into a committed relationship with a respectful, kind person

B)     This new guy’s self-involved.

C)     “He’s very set in his ways,” Taika Waititi once said, “He feels like the one that needs to have his hand held the most.”

Also, he’s got quite the storied past, which keeps him interesting, he likes goats and respects owls, he’s goofy as fuck, and a total night person, more so than myself.

            Who is he?

            

About This Dream I Had (Coffee Shop, Sleigh)

This dream came about last week.

    

I walked up the entryway of my house - a nondescript place that I hardly saw anything of but knew to be mine - and got near the front door in time to see that soaring directly overhead was a white sleigh that I assumed, with my Western upbringing, to belong to Santa Claus. I saw a hint of the reindeer as well because I at least remember their legs. What the...

About This Dream I Had (Kissing the Wrong People)

      I found my dream on June 3rd to be delightfully weird: Dream Me gets to do some kissing, but with a gross element.

Enjoy.

The Sunday Before

This is an update with some gratitude, some Tarot and a bunch of exclamation points.

3 Short Stories: Weird Fictional Deaths

 Here are three parts of a slowly ongoing writing exercise: "7 Weird, Stupid Ways to Die". More to come!

About This Dream I Had (Garofalo)

Soon after waking, I texted a friend with what I remembered:

 While on vacation, Janeane Garofalo and I had poor comedic taste.
This dream occurred on Friday, August 2, 2019 and I misplaced my notes about it until recently.
I apologize.

About This Dream (Briefly in a Speeding Car)

In this post, I talk about not only my dream, but I spend a paragraph on the pandemic and give a life update. Spoiler: There is absolutely no plan to make sourdough bread.
I mean...just no.

Husbands of Joe Exotic and the Importance of Personal Growth

 

I sat through the docu-series Tiger King, you guys, and I wanna talk about it.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness presents people who are the antithesis of the freedom for which I aim. Get a bunch of deeply hurt children into adulthood and they might devote their lives to the pursuit of control, which of course creates dark drama, then add big cats and poor financial choices, you’ve got Tiger King, so I was reluctant to even click ‘play’.

The Uncensored Library

           I'd like you to know that we have The Uncensored Library at our collective global (sanitized, socially distant) fingertips. I think that's so frickin' cool. Mind you, to access it, I personally would have to get my little godson to let me onto his Minecraft account, since the library's only available on that game, and simply having the bare bones version gives you access, but the fact that I’m still fairly young and already choose to be technologically out of touch is not as alarming as censorship and not as exciting as this resource! You see here, whippersnapper, this be impor’ant!

Puttin’ yourself on lockdown during a pandemic makes life more stressful, for damn sure. That said, a survival mindset typically means that you believe you're always lacking, whatever that lack means to you. It stems from an increase in the stress hormone cortisol, maybe even more adrenaline, which of course means more selfishness, anxiety, fear and greed. The more one might hoard toilet paper or baby formula or price gauge hand sanitizer, the more they are defeating their purpose of empowerment. They're giving their power away to stress. A more productive, less stressful way of managing hardship and a sense of isolation is to focus on a sense of community and of family, as well as personal growth.

           Recently on an episode of her "Better Together" podcast, Maria Menounos chatted with the fantastic psychic medium John Edward and said, “What do people do in prison? They work out, they read, get their Master’s degrees, they do all these things!”, which I think is an appropriate analogy.

Inner Child, Part Two

           I appear in the pink-painted bedroom with a pop sound just as a girl is closing up her jewelry Caboodle and pushing it away.

As expected, we lock gazes, allowing me to see very familiar features – eyes that seem to be a combination of blue, green and grey with a thin ring of yellow around the pupils, framed by long lashes. I’ve always thought of that nose as cute, too.

Within minutes, the crayons and colored pencils are out and we’re storytelling together, drawing scenes, trading ideas and dialogue, coloring in the details. One thing I’ve always been is a storyteller. My right knee aches suddenly, briefly, and, as is my current habit, I unfold my legs.

“Okay,” I say to the little girl. “Where am I? Do I take notes on the meeting?”

“No, you’re helping, we’re talking.”

I chuckle in surprised amusement. “You got it.”

Inner Child, Part One

           I need to sit more with my inner child.

Dark-Eyed Monday

Including today, which is, of course, Monday, the 17th, I had a productive weekend. Writing, exercise, catching up on sleep, learning about the one and only Dawson Church and benefiting from a guided meditation he did with the host of YouTube's "Inspire Nation". I had a lovely dinner with my parents and saw, on the counter, Dad's Valentine's gifts for Mom, which involved a card of which I swear I got a birthday version either in '19 or '18 (That gave me pause, though I blame card companies, not my father). 
Because you were dying to know, yes, my mother still makes tasty chili.
And I finally started watching "AJ & the Queen" on Netflix. 
Younger me always appreciated Rupaul Charles, but as an adult currently undergoing a transformation that involves remembering who I really am, meditating, etc., I'm in a phase of looking up all of these interviews with him, hungry for the parts where he says such inspiring things, putting out into the public the fact that in a sense, this world and its expectations and pressures are an illusion, muthah F, so don't pay it too much mind.



This weekend had also involved a lot of reflection and self-discovery work, which ate up more energy than I had naïvely expected.

I had the day off from work and spent a good chunk of it running errands. Partway through, I happened to look at myself in the mirror, planning to inspect my makeup. I think I felt something near my eye and wanted to be sure, but what held my attention was that -
holy crap -
I did not look good. I mean, I'm pretty and all, but damn, my foundation was doin' nothing to hide these half moons that, at least in the afternoon light comin' through my car window, looked a lot darker than I expected to see after sleeping in today until *gulp* 10:30. I had let myself sleep because upon waking to my alarm two and a half hours earlier, my limbs had felt like lead and I just...didn't feel lazy but not well, not rested. All afternoon, I had felt tired, even after a big cup of espresso, and here was this image. My surprise and concern came about not just because I slept in, but because I had gone to sleep around midnight the night before, which is what I've thought of as a good time - not early, not late - and I had slept until 9/9:30 Sunday. Saturday I had taken an hour nap after only two or three hours' sleep due to my having the occasional, typical night of keeping myself with guilt and anger or past wrongs.
I'm assuming now that the inner work these past four days took more of a stressful toll than I realized. Ugh. Worth it, but ugh. Must fix and recover.

If you decide to dig in to work on yourself, please do what I'm going to master, which is balancing it with the kind of self-care that means de-stressing and proper sleep. We must strive to be good roommates and excellent soulmates to ourselves. 
*gazes into the mirror* Now go to bed, Racoon Eyes. 

Dating Attitude Dichotomy: Cynicism

            For me, dating that is pretty much intuition-free is utter bullshit.

           
            I have a friend who would have loved for me to have dated more and told her more about it. A s much as she loves and supports me, she has occasionally let slip that she seems to make negative assumptions about what kind of person that I and her other friends will attract, not to be catty but to prepare herself using assumptions that are not about or because of me. The source of that is past pain and possibly self-doubt. That said, her words grab the attention of the fearful voice in my head and elicit classic internal reactions of the Shannon I used to be. Our individual negative opinions are not about one another.
 

            In this post, I’m gonna dig into both cynicism and the Law of Attraction. Wanna come along?

Had a Good Moment

It was a Tuesday, I was working consistently at my desk, encouraging my brain to go from the task before me to my energetic efforts, including this genuine desire to change thoughts and the management of emotions. I wanted to change myself somehow on this day, even in the smallest step.
On my lunch break, I meditated for just over ten minutes and did some reading about some spirituality-related practices. Thinking, thinking, thinking.
After work, I had to cover someone's shift volunteering with some rescue cats. One of the animals has been in the care of Second Chance Network, a nonprofit animal rescue collective, for 21 months now, and Sylvester, the cutie with large, pale green eyes appeared to be as frightened as his description card stated, poor baby. As I cleaned his crate, I asked if he was okay with my performing Reiki inside it. He said nothing and looked away, which I decided was not a no.