Dang!

I write, and somebody writes back. It's GREAT! Thank you! I want you to see these responses, I go to "moderate comments", click "publish" .... and .... dang! nothing. Your comments disappear into thin air. Even my personal responses get "trunkated".
I want to post photos, to make my blog serrendipitous and lively, here and now. Okay, so follow the instructions, and - dang!! nothin'. I know it's me. I'll try again, get help -- later.

Meanwhile ... last night in the middle, not exactly a dream, but waking to images of my sisters, two in particular (I have three), a sea of sorrow. Last November on my yearly visit back to the scene of the crime( family of origin), we had a horrible fight. It came out of the blue, that is, thirty years of bottling, shake it up a bit, and pow! contents spewed all over the place and us. Years ago, despite decades in the land of enlightenment (California) it became so impossible to maintain my own evolving identity that I eventually decided to surrender it for the duration of my visits, which are brief. This is a familiar experience to many exiles. Surrendering was an enlightened decision. It made me so happy to put my needy ego aside and be with them, especially my ageing father. They'd always roll out the red carpet for me, and we all had wonderful times together once I'd let go. (There's a huge amount of immature reactivity (negative) and firey energy (positive) in my family, no exceptions.)

But still, the underbelly was denied, gaining momentum, and it exploded with a pin-prick last November. I'd raised the ceiling on forbidden subjects of conversation by expressing my thoughts over acts of cruelty to animals by one of my sisters. I was appalled at her mouse killings, making humor of them, and said so. She then "cut me a new one" as we say around here, in a rage that went all the way. I sat numb and paralyzed, remembering for the first time in my adult life what I'd lived countless times as a child and adolescent with my raging father. I got out of my chair, went to my sister and took firm hold of the collar of her jacket. "Stop, stop now." We were surrounded by other siblings and their mates, all frozen in disbelief. She stopped. I went back to my seat, when I should have left the room, for she then continued where she'd left off, times ten. Without ever meaning to, I was accomplice to this violent catharsis and have bled for it. It has since taught me something about abandoning a situation without abandoning a relationship.

The more consci0us party has the responsibility to mend things, and in this case it's me. I am only a scoche less scared than my sisters (other sister her accomplice) to re-connect. We have become realms apart over the decades-- ultra conventional, ultra-rational (them) versus eccentric and intuitive-rational. Compassion, empathy, love have no particular realm, we are all sentient, I know. Yet finding humility and surrender with people my abused self perceives as chronic blamers is most challenging. How to be for myself without being against them. If I am a mirror for them, then they are that for me. I have to go behind their eyes and see myself as they see me, to better understand what they see. I don't want to! Like them, I want to be righteous. Arrgh and dang.

That event marked the end of my role as scapegoat by my family. In the resulting vacuum, I am searching for words of honest feelings, while being acutely aware of their seasoned judgements and knee-jerk reactions to me. For them, the explosion was a huge threat to the family. For me, it was the beginning of truth and possibilities.

Today I spent the entire day writing and re-writing to my sisters. An entire clockless day is mine, to feel, to reflect, and write thoughtfully to my sisters. What to me is a blessing, is in their eyes "crazy" and directionless, someone they love but hold in contempt. There's the spiritual truism that one can't be held in contempt by anyone unless we agree to it -- yes, I know.
But I now have as much compassion for my young self as I do for my parents and siblings, for nowhere is there more unconscious material than in families and their ancestry. In mine, pride masks as dignity, and hyper-rationalism covers up all the little mouses inside.

Both the confrontation and today's willingness to connect coincide exactly with the intense planetary configurations that began in November and end today. The fitful night, the dream, the reams of typewritten stationery kindling the wood fire, the allowing of self to just be with sacred human feeling, to feel it dissipate and change in my embrace, lighter and lighter, the floatation of truth-telling, of owning my part, the absence of blame, re-membering what was dismembered with my sisters. Paradoxes and oxymorons. All is well, or will be.