MsTiara’s Thoughts

Each year on my birthday, I buy myself a single piece of jewelry that I put a put a promise, a wish or a memory into. Last year I bought myself a beautiful diamond ring that was a circle of diamonds and flowers. That wish and promise was all about reminding myself to be true to who I am and to live for myself and my dreams. But, as I have found, sometimes being true to yourself is painful and a large growth process. You have to understand that you are growing and changing and learning to say no to people and compassionately call out bad behavior without snapping or negating the other person…

Whew, not an easy job and sometimes you get caught up in the intensity of the growth and change that you forget the whole reason you do it in the first place. That reason is to find joy and happiness and to stop living for someone else. So, this year’s birthday gift was all about a reminder to be filled with joy at just the beauty of life, to stop living in the future or the past but instead live in the brilliant moment as it presents itself.

But, what should I buy? I wanted a tear drop star sapphire necklace, but I couldn’t find one that I liked. Diamond earrings, but they weren’t doing it for me. I am in LOVE with Cartier’s LOVE bracelets but 3k isn’t what my budget is this year (gulp, for gold only?!?!) and I think I would like someone to buy me a LOVE bracelet, not myself. So, yesterday I went and visited Tiffany’s. After an hour of looking and trying and looking some more, I saw a thin silver mesh bracelet sitting all by itself in the case. I normally don’t like Tiffany’s mesh since it is very think and bulky. But, it appears this is from their brand new line and they only got one of it and it hadn’t even been released on their website. Needless to say, I fell in love! It just needed something small to set it off and make it unique. After looking and thinking and searching, I decided on a Tiffany lock to use to lock the bracelet onto my wrist.

I am still in the middle of infusing the bracelet with my wish and promise, but so far it is doing a good job of centering me and reminding me of living in the moment and joy.

Brian Mays (of Queen fame) is working on his Astrophysics PHD. For some reason, this justifies my LOVE of Queen Music and my statements of the brilliance of its architecture. If you wonder what I mean, take any queen song and listen to it on some really good headphones (Bohemian Rhapsody of COURSE, but I am talking about any Queen song. Love the Highlander album.

2 Quotes from a wonderful Birthday gift from a dear friend. (thank you for sharing with me such an important part of your childhood, I can’t think of a more meaningful and special gift).

“Why Worry? I am an old man, and have had many troubles, but most of ‘em never happened.” Old Salt – Cape Cod Massachusetts

“At the very thought of ‘Circus’ a swarm of long imprisoned desires breaks jail. Armed with beauty and demanding justice and everywhere threatening us with curiosity and spring and childhood, this mob of forgotten wishes begins to storm the supposedly impregnable fortifications of the present.” e.e. Cummings

As a child I had never been to a true circus and as an adult, I have only been to a Cirque du Soleil, but I so get caught up in the wonder and magic, the glitz and the glamour of a circus.

A Dragon and a Duck walk into a bar…

I have Learned…

Silence from the talkative
Toleration from the intolerant
Kindness from the unkind;

Yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Kahlil Gibran

Almost everyone has some person from the past who continues to stick in their soul like a deep splinter. You know who I’m talking about. The most obvious example is the lover who dumped you years ago for reasons you still don’t understand, or accept. The bully who tormented you in school, the teacher who inspired you and opened doors in your brain or soul that you didn’t know existed. A neighbor who suffered and died with dignity but remained kind and thoughtful right up until the end. Ironically in some cases if you were to go to these people now and tell them what a lasting effect they have had on you, they would be genuinely surprised or perplexed. Because in truth you were only a very small cloud on their horizon, a blip on their screen, or someone they forgot very quickly. But boy, you sure remember *them*.

Jonathan Carroll

“Be still when you have nothing to say, but when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.”

DH Lawrence

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Kahlil Gibran

Deep in the forest, so deep that the world around has never seen the face of the sun, is a small stream that trickles through the forest singing it’s song to any creature who happens to be passing at that moment in time. The stream delights as it moves through the forest and around the rocks, visiting with the different trees and making friends with the leaves who fly down with the latest stories. It likes when the birds float along as they share their dreams in slumber and when the deer come and tickle her as they sip the water. The stream couldn’t imagine where in she would rather be than right there in that moment in time.

Sometimes she would get lonely deep in the darkest of night when all the other creatures are sleeping their slumbers. At those times she wanted to also close her eyes and find the stillness they do when they are deep in their dreams. But a stream really never stops moving, each moment in time is a movement. On one of those deep nights as she continued to murmur in the darkness, she felt the slightest caress run down her surface. At some points it was a whisper of warmth and others a slight chill of coldness. The stream wondered who was caressing her, but could not see anyone along the banks and couldn’t feel anyone sitting on her surface. All she felt was the caress as it lightly moved along her surface. The feel of the caress along her surface stilled her for that moment in time and even though she continued to move and murmur she felt a deep peace that she really never was alone.

So, I am in Europe right now and it is very strange how as you go through life you fall into situations and they affect you and you just move forward and process those situations without realizing how much damage was done until several years later. Then you are forced to deal with the aftermath of the junk that happened so very long ago. Hopefully, I am a smart enough person that I deal with them as soon as I realize how they are affecting me rather than after they have destroyed me.

At the beginning of this year, I had to deal with the realization that a friendship had died and it was time for me to decide whether or not I was going to keep it around or clean it out of my life. Rather than holding onto it and letting it affect me and the rest of my life any longer, I dealt with it with compassion and moved forward. But, I didn’t realize that the moment of the actual ‘death’ was still affecting me and affecting how I dealt with so many things. I think in every situation where there is a death, it changes you, sometimes good and sometimes bad. In this death it emphasized something that I have inside me all the time and that is my personal since of introversion.

The death of the friendship was a moment, in a restaurant. It was an Italian restaurant in Milwaukee. The restaurant sits on one of the canals/river and was enclosed in glass. I was facing towards the outside, the other two people were facing towards me. I was eating veal scaloppini. I sat there with two other people, a boy and a girl. One was the friend and was my roommate on the road for almost 10 years. The other person was a boy, who I thought was also a friend. But, as you learn in life, friendship means different things to different people. I sat in the restaurant with these two other people that I know so very well. But, I sat alone. They talked, they laughed, it was if I was just a bag thrown on the chair. I had never felt so alone in my life. It took several more years before the death finally occurred and a full year after the final realization of the death until the healing was able to occur.

I guess that is where I am now, in the healing portion of the death. I just wish it didn’t have to happen while I am in Europe and should be laughing and enjoying myself. Instead, I just want to sit in café’s in the middle of market squares by myself and eat delicious food and write out my thoughts and feelings.

See, I guess the lesson I learned is that I would rather be by myself and alone than surrounded by a group of people and alone. I cannot think of a more soul destroying thing than sitting surrounded by people and being all alone.