Ghost in Pleasantville

I’m in Boulder, Colorado.  This is a very pleasant place, a sort of utopia , full of sunshine, big green mountains, wild flowers, fruit trees, yoga studios, organic food, and happy, healthy, beautiful, shiny people and their happy, healthy, beautiful, shiny dogs.  The locals refer to their town as “The Bubble ,”  it’s rumored to be hard to penetrate, but I seem to have penetrated it without even trying.  My friend Robin, a local Boulder Bubblelite, says that’s how it works, and I’m feeling pretty and special sitting here in Vic’s coffee house. I am surrounded by affluence and beauty, and I seem to fit right in, admiring my  new shiny blueberry blue toes propped on a chair, while I sip my iced pomegranite green tea.  Life is good here.

I should be relaxed, right? At this moment, there is nothing to worry about, there is nothing to do.  Just sit here and write, drink gourmet beverages, and make eyes at the sexy hairless man with the interesting  wooden shoes and  the gravely voice sitting across from me.

But….I’m not relaxed. I’ve had enough of this relaxing shit,  it’s making me edgy, and empty. I want to go back to work!

Today it’s been a full month since my last shift at The Mayo Clinic,  and of course while I was working, all I could think about was this time.  Long days full of adventure and writing layed out before me, and I was counting the days before I would make my great escape into the big wide world of the unknown.  And here I am, smack in the middle of it.  The unknown is disorienting…..

The me that I used to know, whoever “I”  is, seems to have been left behind in Phoenix.  I think she was too afraid to made the journey, so she leapt out of this body, and is currently living inside Tip the Dog, who is suddenly doing more than his doggie share of down dogs, and has taken to escaping out the front door running towards Starbucks, and feeling quite incomplete without opposable thumbs.

Here in the unknown, I am a ghost.  I find myself asking the biggest question of all, “who am I?”  If I’m not a nurse, who am I?  Without my name followed by RN, who am I?  Without call lights to answer, doctors to call, wounds to dress, fires to put out, asses to wipe…..?

Who am I?

If I’m not a yogini, who am I?  I have been working with this practice for twelve years….and I’m thinking it may be time to lay it to rest.

I have been going to yoga, like I did in Phoenix…..but….I’m not sure I like yoga anymore.  Ashtanga classes in Oakland;  the instructor teaching my classes has won the title, “Best Yoga Teacher in The Bay!”,  for something like three years in a row, and he gave some yummy adjustments, but my body ended up feeling worse the next day, and I’m tired of feeling beat up.  Here in Pleasantville, I’ve been taking Anusara classes, good old John Friend and his heart-centered practice do nothing for me, but man it sure used to, I used to get excited about the universal principles of alignment and the loops and spirals, but now I just get annoyed by the blabbering teacher repeating shit I already know, and my burning muscles and aching joints singing some whiny song I’m sick of hearing.  I’m not excited about yoga.  I’m thinking of breaking up with yoga.  I never thought it would come to this…….

Who am I?

I don’t recognize this woman…… I do still seem to be a woman.

No one knows my name.  I am anonymous. 

Yesterday I had my anonymous ghost status confirmed.  I have been writing “my” memoir, and as I was digging into my blistering teenage-hood, there he was..Zach.  My boyfriend when I was 15. He gave me his custom punk rock denim jacket, one cuff  lined with silver spikes, and the back screaming punk rock through a mohawked head that Zach drew with a black magic marker.  I loved this jacket,  it was the punk rock equivalent of a Letterman jacket,  and when I wore this, I felt like a punk rock princess.  I sent him a message on Facebook asking him if he remembered it, I wanted to get the details right.  This led to a chat session, a session in which I discovered…..that Zach didn’t remember me. 

Even though we met again when I was twenty-seven,  and we dated, he introduced me to his parents, called me a temptress….( Zach was raised Jewish, and had been saved by Jesus during a drug trip…so when I met him again at 27, he was a born again Christian) , he didn’t remember me.  He remembered my face he said, and that was good, he thought.  He shared many intimate details about himself via Facebook chat, revealing a sensitive and thoughtful man,  a man who had suffered many a trauma, and had experienced many a bad drug trip.

We chatted for thirty minutes and then said goodbye, he told me to feel free to contact him again at any time.  I felt bad after our chat.  He was a significant (somewhat) figure in my life, a boy I kissed when I was fifteen, and again when I was twenty-seven.  I remember intense conversations about heaven and hell, and whether or not I was there to lead him away from Jesus and into the sinful world of sex and desire, he warned me with eyes as big as moons that I was going to hell, and I told him I thought his hell was all in his head.  Ours was a passionate affair, that ended for reasons I don’t remember….:)

I remember those days like they were last year, but for Zach our time together was lost in the fires that consumed his brain cells. 

Who am I?

My friend Shannon keeps claiming that she doesn’t exist, and while I get the theory behind this…..The ego dissolves…the identity is just an illusion, a figment of your imagination,which is simply just a bunch of chemicals arranged in a certain way that react to stimuli, that is made of exactly the same stuff your flesh is made of, and that tree, and those shoes, and….all the same substance just arranged differently….something like that…it still bugs me a bit, cause I love the ego who calls herself Shannon, and sometimes Gray, and sometimes Nothing.

And it’s out of my ghostly hands. Dissolving.  And sometimes “I” fight, and sometimes “I” don’t.  I notice the feeling when the energy controls, and when the energy is absorbed into what is presently arising. It doesn’t matter what this thing called Kate does…cause the outcome is gonna be the same….whatever the master chemist wants. 

So for now…..”I” am a sometimes reluctant, sometimes relaxed….ghost.  BOO!