Thursday, October 30, 2014

At Ben Bradlee’s Funeral


My dream time had me at Ben Bradlee’s funeral this morning. With numerous others I was helping to set up for the reception that would follow the memorial service.

How odd, caterers and waiters would have been tending to this task. But somehow in my dream it looked more like a Shabbat service with an Oneg Shabbat at our local synagogue. (Oneg Shabbat is the gathering after Jewish Sabbath services, often with food and socializing.)

Most interestingly was that there was a table for beverages, alcoholic and otherwise, at which I was placing a Jewish brand of whisky with English lettering of a Jewish man’s name. Even more intriguing is that the name had the initials of my father!

No Hebrew writing, as I recall, but then there might have been in smaller letters that I just didn’t happen to notice. Nonetheless it was a distinctly Jewish brand. And that fact alone held importance for me.

The feeling accompanying the dream was one of warmth, richness, community conviviality.  Absent qualities at gatherings I attended in Washington with much too much on the superficial power game playing level.

However, in this scene the theme seemed to be one of interweaving parts of myself into wholeness and well being. Also there was a sense of something having to do with the inheritance of my two children, now grown, Elisa and Eric.

How very interesting it all was and somewhat unusual as I had only met Ben Bradlee one time, along with his wife Sally Quinn.

The occasion had been a rather intimate brunch, as I recall, at the home of my former sister-in-law when she was writing for the Washington Post. The Omelet Man, entertainer and cook extraordinaire combined, had been our chef, if I remember correctly.

Dreams are so revealing, if one can make use of them as messages from the unconscious to guide one’s personal emerging of clarity.

Being so inclined I have been taking time to do just that since.

Strange the fragments of me, yearning for unity, now coming into my conscious mind from this dream time adventure at this still early time of the day. By interpretation I have, thus far, included these clues from my unconscious was signaling --
  • My prophecy-predicted return to Washington;
  • The anti-Semitism in myself, finally reversed after decades, that was, no doubt, heightened by my fast track years in D.C.;
  • Unfinished business with my former sister-in-law;
  • Concern for the legacy I will leave my children.
As the day is still early now. What will this dream herald for me as my day goes on?

What guideposts will I recognize as this dream continues to work its way through my psyche, like the gift of wisdom from a place somewhere beyond that dreams always bring, if one allows?

On the level of earthly reality, a man of great stature and contribution to the betterment of our society (and politics, one would hope) has now passed beyond our mundane world. And, I am grateful to have shared a brief moment of time with this man who made a legend of the Washington Post in exposing the Watergate break-in.

This was an enormous gift for me, personally. I will never forget the model he represented for me of someone who relentlessly searched for truth and had no fear of revealing it, as big and bold as anyone could.

For this I am, apparently, so grateful that I even brought myself to attend his funeral in absentia on a day that I, in actuality, was traveling to Johns Hopkins battling, once again, to save my very precarious eyesight.

On that score, my eye infection crisis, “we are heading in the right direction,” my doctor says while I, concurrently, continue to navigate my return to Washington, as my prophecy predicts, at least in my dreams.

So I take from my having attended Ben Bradlee’s funeral that celebration is unfolding, even in times of loss, especially if a Jewish brand of whiskey, honoring my tribal heritage can show up for the event.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Searching For Goddess-zilla, My Inner Warrior Hero


I woke up this morning; much earlier than intended, feeling crushed, decimated. So I buried my head into my pillow, turning myself over in search of the replenishing power of more sleep.

For the next three hours, in and out of unsettled slumber, I battled my way to regaining my inner strength; the creative power I rely upon to craft the beauty that fills most of my days.

It had been a challenging week, this one just passed. A blindness-threatening eye infection had sent me to Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute five days out of seven for emergency care.

Thank goodness I have one of the world’s top ophthalmologists, Dr. John Gottsch, as my doctor and am, thus, SEEING improvement today.

But it’s been rough, let me tell you!

There is no way I ever want to be blind again. But there that menace to my well-being was, looming over me again this past week. And, the ordeal, had emotionally caught up with me this morning as progress on the purely physical level allowed me a respite.

My eye disease, keratoconus, diagnosed when I was a junior in college, has been and will continue to be a fast moving roller coaster ride when symptoms of its perpetual presence resurface.

One learns to live with it, have enormous gratitude for the smooth times and lean into  the turbulent ones with the medical attentiveness required.

Fortunately, my life has been dominated by days of fun, adventure and celebration. And, I am not much moved for new tests to my endurance. I like the good times better. Of course, I did rise to the test and, no doubt, am, again, a better person for facing the challenge.

Murat Yagan, our Beloved community development mentor, recently deceased, guided us, his devoted students, to always be intent on refining our skills as alchemists; turning the lead of ourselves into gold. By now the discipline of the practice has become an art form in many of us.

However, today, I was weary from the near ceaseless practice of this art this past week.

Yet evidenced by the way I feel now, uplifted as I look outside my office window at the golden hues of sunlight shining on autumn leaves, I feel my Inner Warrior Hero strength that fuels my life surging through me again. I am an Amazon-bred woman in the spirit of the Caucasus Mountains from which Murat originated, horseless though I be.

My Amazon-self, the part of me that I call Goddess-zilla, feels ready to take on this new day now.  A few hours of added sleep, a bit of telephone hanging out with my Spirit Sister Sue and an innate, highly disciplined Inner Warrior Hero, the alchemist within me have got me going again.

P.S. The Inner Warrior Hero as societal and political transformer is to be the next coming attraction from New Horizons and myself so keep your EYES OPEN FOR DEVELOPMENTS HERE, featuring our new --

with interactive applications to help you transform the lead of your life into the gold.

Coming in November!

Friday, October 17, 2014

Scenes of the Crime


Hot Pants, Motorcycles And K Street, in progress, commentary

Anastasia The Super Sleuth says –
Sometimes there is only so much analyzing and theorizing about what’s going on “out there”  if you want to make progress in life.
Actually, Anastasia The Super Sleuth emphatically says –
Truth be told sometimes it’s essential to just simply immerse oneself in living and let nature take its natural course as it will. In other words give up the intellectual gymnastics and embrace an experience.” 
Enough, already, with the internet and other sources of mental gyrations.
No celebs to get you high on their self-generated excitement. No mind- altering chemicals needed -- and – guess what you’ve got?

An adventure into full-blown reality! (Hopefully a safe one.)

So it was with this principle as my guiding belief; be an adventurer and go off on a real live adventure into life, that I made my way into the belly of the beast, yesterday, for a day trip to Washington.  

Call it book research or whatever, I took myself, along with a friend, back to the scene of a whole slew of crimes I committed or participated in, living life on the edge on the D.C. fast track.

OMG! There they were; the memories and associated emotions, each and every mile of the way.

So much to digest from just this one, day-long sojourn to enhance my connecting with me!

I did not, this time, hit the ground running as I did on my pilgrimage to Ohio back in August. 

But then Washington is not and has never been associated with the purity of my young innocence as is my small Ohio hometown. 

No siree, Bob! Washington was the centerfold of my dark side which I will reveal more and more about as we move closer and closer into my full return.

The only purity I ever knew in D.C. was born of the idealism of my young adulthood and the illusions of our “unadulterated” founding fathers. After all, Lincoln’s birthday is associated in my mind with a certain delicious school room sugar cookie and George Washington, of course, with cherry pie.

How sweet it was.

Oh well! Maturity typically comes along with some hard earned wisdom.

Nonetheless, I did make a pilgrimage of sorts back to my young adult roots in Washington,  yesterday, with an adventuresome country friend. Given the inestimable one-way streets and interminable traffic tie ups, round and round we went with me remembering and remembering and remembering.

OMG!

I am truly on my way now to living out the manifestation of my prophecy; the return of the goddess of hot pants and motorcycles to K Street.

Will we have a parade when it’s time to celebrate my return?

So important was the experience that I am going off again, tomorrow, for a bit. This time for a little vacation to have an ample respite to just let these happenings soak into my soul as I allow myself time to investigate the meeting of the inner me and the outer as I prepare myself for goodness knows what next.

Remember while I’m gone that Anastasia The Super Sleuth says – 
Truth be told sometimes it’s necessary to just simply immerse oneself in living and let nature take its natural course as it will. In other words give up the intellectual gymnastics and embrace an experience.
Enough, already, with the day to day details – and  -- internet mental gyrations.
I’m not particularly hooked on this internet game but a bit of a respite will me good anyway.

I thought I’d just let you know what’s happening here.

Have yourself a nice weekend!

Saturday, October 4, 2014

To Redeem One Person Is To Redeem The World


I received a rather unsettling call last week from the county jail. . The call came from one of my “honorary daughters;” young women I had counseled over the close to twenty-five year span I spent as a psychotherapist (1974 – 1997). She was one of a handful who kept tracking me down, begging for more of what she had once had from me in those years.

Each one of them had, indeed, been a hand full! I had not wanted to give them more.

Several days later I received a follow-up letter. The letter looked dark and ugly and crazy and felt correspondingly so. I didn’t welcome it at all. I literally screeched inside my mind when I saw it.

Thank goodness there have been only a handful who have challenged me thus!

I was taken aback by the insanity of that letter. It had the appearance of graffiti; words written all over the envelope, so dense I wondered the postwoman could read my address, with messages represented as ordained by Jesus himself. Inside, along with gibberish I could not fathom, were several cartoons, clipped from who knew where, matching the envelope in offensiveness,.

I do appreciate the love, respect and devotion with which these women have honored me. 
Yet the boundaries of professionalism have decreed, along with common sense, that enough is supposed to be enough!

Clients are not privileged to simply adopt therapists as if a therapist could be assumed to be an adoptive parent, pledged to orphan children.

I can appreciate the yearning of these “honorary, self-appointed daughters” of mine. With both my parents long gone, on occasion I have wanted a stand-in parent or two. But certainly I have not been in need of more children.

I already have two, a girl and a boy, a sufficient nuclear family and an enormous dysfunctional, extended family system which for all its complexities still holds the central importance of my life. 

But try as I might, I have not been able to permanently fend off this small band of groupies.

Cyclically they lose their periodic swarming on me like a plague of locusts, returning again and again.

Short of filing a protective order to keep them away, I believe I have tried every humane, possible option to dissuade their proclaimed affectionate attachments to me. Nonetheless, each of them is about as welcome in my life as the stink bugs that are, again, invading our local territory.

It is with this challenge imposing itself upon me that I embarked upon the final stages of Yom Kippur, the most sacred of Jewish holidays.

Sin upon sin, consciously known or unknown, I am called, in keeping with the holiday, to examine the limitations of my personhood on this last day of the Jewish Ten Days of Awe; awe being the promised outcome of a character and soul sufficiently white-washed to officially begin another good year.

So what am I supposed to do with this visitation from an unsolicited fan of mine?  

The quandary challenged me as I began the final assessment day of atonement.

Should I turn my back on her when she is in dire need, again, having relapsed into her drug addiction and prostitution?

Even if it is for the umpteenth time over the past twenty years I have known her?

Should I ignore her pleadings when she has somehow gotten me, again, confused with her salvation? 

Although I am quite certain I am not the Messiah!

Answers for our salvation do not come easy, I reflect.

Then prayerfully I beseech that Power Greater Than Me, speaking the words of my heart, I plead --

“Please G-d, redeem me from “women who love too much.”

Then, behold, a light illumines me, as if from on high, beaming forth to liberate my consciousness.

Maybe the one person I am most responsible for redeeming is -- ME, first!

Jewish New Year of not – there comes a time when enough is simply enough, even when being charitable!

May all good people be inscribed in whatever good book they love for a good year ahead.

Jewish New Year, 5774.

L’ Shanah Tova.