Astride two worlds (and in between something else too)

If the non-grasping mind is something to be attained (though attained is a poor choice of word giving what I am attempting to describe, although I like the irony so I will keep it in...), if I were to spell out the meaning of where I am and what I should "strive" for (har har har!) - that would be just about it. Life is holding out beautiful promises, and yet it is asking me not to need them. It is asking me to look to what is going on now and love that instead. He is being rather tough and humorous, is God, and I love him for it.
I am trying. I let myself wriggle a bit in desire and expectation, but I try to laugh at myself as much as possible. These promises, these possible sunrises hint at gorgeous colours, but I know that last week I never saw the hint of them before and I was happy in greyness then. A very solid, tangible kind of happiness. You can own greyness. You can illuminate it. You can make moments by yourself and you can dream grey fantasies like forties movies. You can watch them again and again until they become part of you, part of your private fabric which you need never share with anyone.
But, if those New Thought people are to be believed, pure fantasy is a dangerous beast. Suddenly those mere details that you had meant to be alternate or purely Platonic, because you were happy in Limbo, start to materialise in shocking reality - in numbers, in faces, in words, in actions, in situations - and suddenly you have to react to them. You have suddenly created a language of signs which start to show up every where you go, on buses, in shop windows and they begin to promise...You begin to think you know what they mean.
Because of your movies, you are prepared for your role, you think, you know what to do next...and then some naughty God presses the pause button on everything and you think ( you are actually given the luxury of thinking) "Well, how will I feel if this doesn't come true?" or "How will I feel if it does?" and then "Ok, but what if it is slightly different?"
There are inklings of rightness and there are the reptiles and sometimes the reptiles wear movie star masks and vice versa and suddenly you are wanting, but you don't know what you are wanting, you are just wanting, because what was is not and cannot be again and what will be is not either and may never be...you don't know what will be, you have done what you can do, you have played your scenes.

Keep on walking with your eyes on the ground

I wish I could say "eyes on the horizon" but I have no idea what is on the horizon and I do not dare to imagine what that should consist of...I work hard on my various projects and chances come up, but I am too petrified to hope for any outcomes as I know by now that, in general, nothing comes of those chances. Still I dutifully follow up until I am told again that I am/what I do is not suitable.
I am not being negative here, I am simply speaking of past experience. I am refusing to believe that this will necessarily repeat itself, I am willing myself to have faith that something will come of all this, and I am committing myself to preparing myself for and following up on any opportunities that arise...
I am gonna try keep things as close to my own style as possible though, as that is the only way in which I can sustain interest and courage, and be willing to suffer losses where it wouldn't have worked for me anyway...I am getting good feedback but as they say, "Now show me the money!" Or at least a means of getting closer to making my own living.
I have so much to do right now, there do not seem to be enough hours in the day to do all that I ideally should be doing...there is organising the Club Night with Vincent and Lorena, there is practising my mixing, developing my mixing, practising my piano, practising using Logic and writing songs (not happening at all but at least my class is starting up soon), there is theatre book reading to enhance my classes, there is publicising my classes, organising my classes, there is meditation practice (which I have been sticking to quite faithfully), there is keeping a journal (which is disgracefully sporadic), there is reading for enjoyment (which I am loving at the moment), there is listening to new music for DJing (very difficult as my computer very mysteriously refuses to speak to my iPod and it's better for me to wait till I go to Glasgow to get it looked at...), there is keeping up with correspondence, there was going to be brushing up on my German and Russian (which hasn't happened at all!)
And I still like to see my good friends amidst all that....And of course there is sleeping, which for some reason is sheer heaven at the moment. Since getting my homeopathic remedy, and in a strange way, since enjoying the Vampire books so much, my dreams have been so vivid and I have been sleeping so well. My room is a little bit warmer and my bed so cosy!
So what's happening? Well there are the possibilities of a couple of DJ gigs here in Galway - though the scene is so cliquey and depressing and unfriendly and backwards - though you have to chase people with the ferocity of a pit-bull in order to get them to come back to you at all - though I am not sure if there is an outlet for the type of music I play, even though it is fashionable anywhere else in the world! All I can do is keep trying...maybe it would be almost better to wait till I get to Berlin, so I have no reason to get too attached to this place.
I've recorded a few sets - a bar one which is nice, but kinda specific to a bar so not exactly setting me on fire - and then another one called "Valhalla By Twilight" which is a very beautiful slow-building deep and brooding tech house into techno mix and which I think is the best thing I've ever done. It's been getting alot of comments on Music V2 - one guy said it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever heard, this London girl DJ said she'd love to mix with me sometime (really sweet but I am so slow to get my hopes up!) and another guy is putting it in a music review as he liked it so much.
Strangely enough, Lorena was a little disparaging of it, saying the mixing is perfect but it "doesn't have enough breaks" and "doesn't make her want to get on the dancefloor". I thought this was a bit odd, considering she was saying my other mixes "weren't progressive in style" and that it's clearly a chillout mix. Not all mixes are for dancing. I know she didn't mean it badly, it was just her Argentinian bluntness. but if she wants to hear a dancefloor mix she can go and record it herself instead of telling me what I should be doing.
I take it as an opportunity to gain independence from her opinion. As she was my first teacher, I relied on her opinion alot, now it's time to stand on my own two feet and not be held back. It was the first mix where I felt I was really finding my own style and I am very very proud of it. Nearly everyone else loved it too! Lewis said you could put any major DJs name on it and sell it as a commercial release...
Then there is the chance of being signed with a good agent in Scotland, I think they might possibly be the best. I was recommended to them by a director I had worked with and he told me that they were interested and to send my stuff to them. Unfortunately I don't have any headshots here in Ireland and I certainly need to get new ones done and I can't do that until my hair has grown out a couple more inches so it can be cut into a more classic bob. So I emailed them with my updated CV, an older headshot and a theatre still. It was just before Christmas so I didn't expect them to get it for a while and I waited till the start of January to call them.
When I did the lady seemed very polite although she was very busy. She said she had just got back to the office and hadn't got through all the email yet and to resend it and she would speak to me soon. I told her I was in Ireland just now but in between Galway and Glasgow and she seemed to think that was cool. She seemed to know who I was when I said and said she would call me. So about a week ago I re-emailed the stuff and left it for now. No word. Not that I am worried...I just am so used to everything being a dead end that I am not very optimistic. And I am not sure how to follow up. Surely if she was interested she'd call me? I guess she was interested when Zam spoke about me but when she saw my headshot she thought "I can't get this girl work"!!!
The classes are ok, I did flyering this week and though many of my old students are coming back, I am slower to get phone calls from new ones. Could be something to do with the ole recession I guess...
I'm not down about all this. I just hope things don't follow the previous dead-end fashion. I'm going to commit extra hard to follow things through just to encourage change from my end.

The Waking by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

To Teach or Not to Teach?

Ok that's a moot point, because for the next while I will be teaching...thing is, I am not sure if I am really cut out for it! I just can't get past the bit where you have to be comfortable with your students thinking you are an idiot and that it is a waste of time doing your class because they are not getting what they expected out of territory that was previously foreign to them.
Ok that doesn't make sense...what is the balance between pressing on with teaching them necessary skills that will allow them to interact as a group, access their physicalities and think outside the box, and allowing them immediate gratification of "doing scenes" and "being directed" and "playing parts" - simply because they have paid me to teach them "Acting for Fun", they are not professional actors and they just want to see what it is about?
But I don't think they realise that what I am showing them is what it is about! And I don't think they realise how much they are learning...And they are learning. They are a talented, imaginative group...But I need to get the balance between teaching them and pleasing them, even more so that they are not professionals. especially if I want to keep them as customers and continue with my teaching work. And I now know that what I think is fun about acting may not be fun for them...
I know my classes are well-planned and quite integrative, if that's a word, in that all the Chekhov exercises we start with feed into the games we play later on and each class has a strong theme and goal...But I think all that I hold dear is lost on them, perhaps because I find it so hard to communicate. I find communicating my ideas and feelings very difficult in general - so perhaps I am not cut out to teach. And I hate undergoing the necessary resentment, resistance and separation from the group that a teacher has to undergo. I feel so awful to think that they may be regretting spending money on my class. And I am so longing to teach professional actors this stuff and get right into it, BUT professional actors never have the money to do classes!
Hey, but tis still a nice way of getting on top of my debts and earning the freedom for the next stage of my life. And I know from before that teaching has bad days and wonderful days for everybody concerned.
I noticed something about myself yesterday too, in a brief exchange I had with an aquaintance of mine who is my age and has had quite a successful acting career in Ireland - a lovely girl. Part of me is humiliated by the idea that I am teaching acting classes. And it shouldn't be. I don't always feel like that, at times the idea of teaching fills me with joy. But when she said, quite innocently, "Maybe this is the start of a school!" I suddenly came out with "NO! No..." Out of nowhere.
And I know what it was, I couldn't bear the thought of this being my life, stuck here in my home town, committed to my own acting school. I don't know why.
And I started into the exercises on "Entering the Castle" last night - I've been working very slowly and steadily and finally got to the first room...and God the amount of questions in that room are exhausting! They'd keep you going for a month! Well I didn't write cause I was quite tired, but I resolutely pondered some of them for a while, and I'd start and I couldn't get clear answers and then I'd drift off and try to come back...some of the questions just don't hit me but I want to honour them anyway...but I tried and tried this contemplation thing and then I finally asked my soul "Just say something!" Because it sounded like my mind just babbling away in answer to the questions, truths I could grasp but could I live them? Ya dee Ya dee YA!
And then...something new filtered through the mess...I don't know if it was my frazzled mind...something like...the question had been "In what way does your fear of being humiliated control your life?"...well I realised that my fear of committing to anything, anything may have to do with the fear of the humiliation of living a normal life...a life I would perceive as not having infinite possibility, which is nonsense, I know."If I do this, then this closes this off, but I can't do this cause I've no money because I haven't committed to anything. But at least I don't have the humiliation of having an identity that I don't want. Cause I've done that. Bank Worker, ha!"
Ok when I write this down it doesn't make sense. I think it is quite healthy to work towards the life you dream of, but not when you are doing it to avoid humiliation, the inner voice that says mockingly "Oh look there's Seralu. Yeah she never lived up to her potential."
My head is scrambled. There's tinges of shadow in the good isn't there...why am I doing this (whatever it is) ? To "fill my potential" so I don't have to feel guilty and humiliated, or because I just want/need to do it. Seralu, methinks you are still a bit of a phoney m'dear!

Will You Go?

I had a dream the other night and for the first time in my life I woke up and realised that this was not a dream, it was a vision. It seemed to come from beyond the mess of my subconscious, its content was so much bigger than me like something bigger than me was speaking through me.
I don't know where to begin with describing it, it was a synthesis of so many big things that made sense and yet when I woke up I knew exactly what was being said to me. It was a question being asked of me, a big question set so perfectly in the context of all that I have been preoccupied lately.
I'm not going to go into all the details, I'll just try to put the most important points. I wonder is it right of me to communicate a vision here, but maybe putting it into words will lead me into it again...
Before this part of the dream, I was dreaming normal dreams, there was something about the novel "War and Peace" and being stuck around two difficult men staying in my home who hated and were cruel to me and yet I was being forced (perhaps by my family or mum, I can't recall) to put up with them and suppress increasing violent rage...none of it really stuck out, it was one of those dreams that you knew was processing some emotion or other, I don't know and I don't know where the novel came in anyway...
It was a new sequence, the start of which is really really vague for me and makes no logical sense but yes has a kinaesthetic feeling of rightness. I was at the cinema watching one of the "Three Colours" movies, but there seemed to be some confusion about which one it was. The movie was over, but there seemed to be a bit at the end which I was compelled to stay on for. (Actually that is the case with that particular trilogy, a sequence at the end which ties together all three movies)
I was watching it, but suddenly I was in it...I was one of the extras and though the main female role was being played by Julie Delpy (the heroine of Three Colours White which is my favourite of the three) by the end of it, it was me.
I went through a post office to a garden where a man was waiting for something. (There had been something about a train station too which I couldn't recall.) He had been waiting there for some time and a crowd had joined him. I wasn't sure if the thing he was waiting for had already arrived and recurred on a regular basis or if it hadn't arrived yet.
It was night and we were waiting for the coming of something, we didn't know what it was and he didn't say what it was. He was an older man, like an older version of Jean-Marc Barr out of "The Big Blue", a man I think is really beautiful looking. He just played with children but he was waiting for the heroine too. She didn't know why she was there. It was an uneasy wait, people were jostling, someone fell into a pond and she fished them out. We were looking up into the sky. There was a sense of "What are we waiting for? Why are we here? Will it even come?"
The sky was grey with wispy clouds, the garden was dark. "Ah" I thought, wanting to make sense, wanting to know what I was expecting before it even came. "We are waiting for the dawn. Perhaps we are all waiting for the dawn to come so that we can see the new day together and realise how beautiful it is so we can all live new lives." This comforted me.
And then the dawn came and I was the heroine. Yes the dawn was beautiful, the sky illuminated with colour beyond anything that you can ordinarily conceive. Here I began to realise that this was coming from somewhere so far beyond me that it was so much BIGGER than what I had been expecting. And it was a terrible frightening beauty because suddenly the earth began to shake, things fell from the sky and the world as we knew it began to be destroyed.
The man drew me to him, he alone had known that this would happen, and that there was hope in this, it needed to be. As I drew close I lost my fear. "I have loved you forever and ever" he said to me (or something to that effect but MORE, the feeling was more than the words) "I have been waiting for you. Will you go?"
"Will you go?" I woke up with this question blazed at the forefront of my mind and a distinct certainty that "This is no mere dream."

A small postscript which could be my fancy and means nothing but strikes me as amusing and hindsightful...two days later I met an man who looked like an older Jean-Marc Barr!

Song: If You Seek … by Thomas Merton

If you seek a heavenly light
I, Solitude, am your professor!

I go before you into emptiness,
Raise strange suns for your new mornings,
Opening the windows
Of your innermost apartment.

When I, loneliness, give my special signal
Follow my silence, follow where I beckon!
Fear not, little beast, little spirit
(Thou word and animal)
I, Solitude, am angel
And have prayed in your name.

Look at the empty, wealthy night
The pilgrim moon!
I am the appointed hour,
The “now” that cuts
Time like a blade.

I am the unexpected flash
Beyond “yes,” beyond “no,”
The forerunner of the Word of God.

Follow my ways and I will lead you
To golden-haired suns,
Logos and music, blameless joys,
Innocent of questions
And beyond answers:
For I, Solitude, am thine own self:
I, Nothingness, am thy All.
I, Silence, am thy Amen!

A Day for Contemplation

I am having a quiet day all to myself today. The last week has been so busy, getting everything organised for the drama classes I am hoping to run. I have been getting flyers designed, ready and then been going all around town putting them up and handing them out. So far I have five or six signed up for classes, one person has signed up for three different workshop. So the next step is to start getting all my thoughts in order for these classes. Plan out a rough shape, and reread enough to inspire myself to teach again.
I've also been making some headway as regards making contacts with the University. I have about three different people who want to meet up with me to talk theatre, one of them the head of the BA Acting course recently set up there and another a lecturer on the MA in Theatre Studies who has spent alot of time in Russia, so we have alot of common interests. I am looking forward to just talking. I hope I can remember how to talk about theatre. Lately I have just been putting one foot in front of the other and going with what is happening. So I won't panic. I have no idea what I want out of any of this so there is nothing to get nervous about. I do need to jump into reading my Chekhov and Stanislavski books though. Any scrap of free time I've had for reading lately has been spent on "Entering the Castle" which has been consuming my attention. Feels so horrible to need to wrest away from it when I am finding it so absorbing! I am only reading it for now and listening to the cds to get an overview. Partly because there is so much in it and I want to get a sense of trajectory and I suppose partly because some of the work seems so very hard in it. When I read the exercises in some of the rooms, I can't even begin to think of answers for them. So I guess that's why I am just getting a feel for it right now, beginning to pray more and write the odd private journal entry.
Today though, I feel like starting. I made a journal on my laptop just for working on it, where I can write my exercises and put anything that inspires me from the book into. I want to collect images of the different rooms to spark my imagination, I want to put quotes and favourite pieces of sacred writing in there. Like a kind of scrapbook/journal that is for my eyes only.
Then when I was looking for an image of the castle that appealed to me, I came across a couple of different blogs (not on blogger, with different hosts) that really appealed to me, of people writing about their spiritual quests and exploring the relationship between Art and the Spirit. The relationship between Art and Mysticism is really beginning to interest me. For now, anyway. I am a fickle soul. I have commitment problems!
But I guess that is why I did start this blog. To explore the effects my spiritual search is having on my life. Within the bounds of privacy of course! What I promised myself was to write each time only on a given topic without being too confessional or digressive as if I was writing it only for myself. To write as if I was writing for others, though I don't mind in the least if anyone reads it or not. I guess to impose some discipline on my mind by consciously forming thoughts which I need to take responsibility for as there is the possibility others could see them. To solidify my inner life somewhat? It is so nebulous in there!
So I should write in it more. I feel bad that I haven't. But on the other hand I am aware that, in this period of my life, there is a need for privacy too and sometimes I don't have anything to say that I would like to say to anyone else. That's why I need to start "Entering the Castle" properly today, even if I haven't fully given the book the once over. (I can still finish it from the point I am at in the Sixth Mansion and start from the start in greater and more laborious detail).
I just don't want the self-examination in the first three mansions to become too morbid!