I was on the cross-trainer in this gym this weekend when I spied a woman I like who I’ve not seen in awhile. I don’t know her name. I do know I like her. We’re about the same age, the same color and seem to see eye to eye somehow.

“How have you been?” I asked as she grabbed the spray bottle and a paper towel to wipe down the machine next to me. Continue reading Men, Women, Weight Loss and Oppression In The Gym

Speaking of pain and that last artist post…I’ve had a personal crisis over the week or ten days. Maybe you’ve noticed I’ve not been posting so frequently and the freakish struggle I’m having behind the scenes is why.

Now it’s not that big a deal for me to have a crisis, because I have them all the time. I have a life that is full to overflowing with intense trauma and at this stage of my life, I can’t say that I care. I quite like being me and I could not be me…I would not be me, if even one shred of my life was changed.

So anyway, I was talking to my editor on the phone this week. He’s a close friend and I was in a state of shock at the time, post acute trauma.

“I’m sure this is good for me,” I said. “I will do something good with this. I’m sure it will benefit me, I just don’t know how yet,” I explained.

I can’t remember exactly how he responded, but I know he was somewhat incredulous I would say something like that in the state I was in. A couple days later, I was talking to someone else and better able to articulate my feelings about this:

“I don’t want a life without pain. I have no interest in avoiding pain. I will take the pain! How else can I do my job? If people write and they are in pain, how am I going to be able to respond if I am not willing to feel? If I stay in my head about these problems and try to write, I will have nothing to say. It would be completely worthless. And I like feeling things. I like being compassionate. I like feeling things, period. And as far as I am concerned, there’s no reason for me to be on this planet if I am not going to feel pain and channel it, considering this is how I’m strung and what I am supposed to do…”

So what about you? How do handle pain?

Do you feel it? Do you seek it out? Or do you medicate it and try to avoid it at all costs?

~ skip to Pain – Redux

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pictured – Pluto, Agostino Carracci, 1557