I M Perfect lady

Author: bjukuri

  • The little blue note…

    Sometimes you are just floating along in your day, and out of nowhere the past comes and stops you dead.   Unexpected and loud, it blows away the energy of inspiration taking with it your happy day.  You are made to take a detour.  Unscheduled it demands your attention, now!  Overshadowing the delightful Author in my writing class.  In seconds the world tilts.

     

    Part of you hesitates like a stubborn child reluctant, but the curiosity wins, again.  Dare you not look, dare you look.  What is the risk to just turning away, not peeping even once?  Who will it hurt more this time, the hope or the hopeless.

     

    When my son was little and I wanted him to do something he didn’t like or if I was the Mom he was unhappy getting, he would say, “I am not going to be your boy no more.”  To him that solved it all, if he was not my boy, I no longer could tell him what to do.

     

    When I opened the mailbox, a large manila envelope poked out behind a few innocent white envelopes.  In the corner the address unfamiliar but the scrawl was familiar and carried the weight of the world.   What do you have to say now?  Why are you so determined to come into my world, what do you have to say to me, what?!   God why?

     

    The mind can scroll many different possibilities, but my body couldn’t take the stress, so I just simply opened it up.

     

    Recipes?!  Recipes for real?! 

    With a small square blue posted note, and the same handwritten scrawl;

    Hello!

    Additional recipes for the family cookbook.

    I miss you very much.

    Please cash check by end of May I want to balance my checkbook. 

    Will stop payment June 1st.

    Love you always Mom

     

    I flip through them absentmindedly and a few family names float around, mixing in with Taco Soup and Waikiki Meatballs.  Not knowing what else to do, I eat my tuna sandwich, looking deeper unseeingly into the many pages of how to prepare meals for a family.  This seems sort of odd, coming from a family that can’t even be one. 

     

    Is there a recipe to put a family together?  How about one that can combine listening ears, seeing eyes and loving arms to create a different mom?  Is that in this pile of paper?  Can you make that?  How long does it take?  Is there time?

     

    What to do with the recipe of a family that doesn’t work?  Can you just get a new recipe? Gather the right ingredients and if you follow all the directions, do it right, will a great tasting family pop out?

     

    This cooker girl can’t find the right ingredients that I need, it seems they are all wrong for the recipe I want.  What appears is the stuff for a family that I no longer have the appetite for.  What I am craving and longing for just isn’t there.

     

    They say you can choose your friends, but families are forever.  I guess they are right, no matter what flavor they are.  There is simply nothing I can do to change them, nothing to make them easier to swallow I am left with this dish that has been handed down from generation to generation. 

     

    All that is left for me to do is refuse to eat.  Refuse to partake.  Go hungry.

    My heart grumbles and rumbles, but this is not where it will get fed, again.

    Empty and hallow it walks away.

    Hopeless won again.

    I am not going to be your girl no more.

    The little blue note never asked how I was…….

       

  • The Earth just accepts.

    Last week while raking the leaves, or more like ripping up the grass, I noticed….I seemed very angry or resentful to all dead leaves.  And I was being mean to the grass, raking it like a head full of snarls. 

     

    I then took a deep breath, relaxed my shoulders and really really looked at what I was doing, the grass, the leaves and even the whole body of the earth.  I was humbled and ashamed. 

     

    First of all can a tree not shed dead leaves?  Does it have control where they land when they fly away?  Is it the tree's fault that part of its nature is to grow leaves and then surrender them when the cycle is over?  And the grass, the poor grass just lying there, like it can stop the leaves from landing or run out of the way. 

     

    And then I come along and punish both, well all of us.  Once I relaxed my grip, with my shoulders soft, my hand lightly holding, I combed or exfoliated the grass.  What a difference it made…to me, and I am sure the grass sighed.   I actually felt like I was doing an act of love.  I was letting the grass breathe, allowing the sun to warm it, and for it to see the sky.

     

     While out there that day, I recalled being a little girl with long blonde hair, too little to style it myself, and feeling responsible for making my mother angry for having to fix my hair.  My head hurt as she hurriedly got the hair in somewhat of a style.  The bus was arriving and I am sure I was desperate to look presentable as I began my day at school.  A incident that neither of us controlled….my hair would tangle as I slept fitfully…..and she was the only one available to make it right.  It wasn’t my fault she had morning sickness again, and she would tell you it wasn’t hers……I just always wished I could be less of a bother or that I could fix myself all things.  On the bus that day, with one braid up and the other down, I erased her struggles and wore my hair down and free.

     

    After my insights, I looked differently at the leaves, their deadness, the perfectly dead condition, helpless but not on purpose.  The wind would come and toss it, and I would chuckle….I think they should all be in a pile, I will rearrange what nature is creating.  I did try and succeeded somewhat….

     

    That is Until I had to get my 14 year old's help to haul them all away.  Another struggle against nature, he just gets to be a boy.  Boys don’t care about leaves and where they lay, it seemed a task not worth doing.  And just maybe he is right.   

     

    We now are waiting for the new birth all around, Spring is here….well almost for today the grass and leaves are wearing a coat of white, but right beneath the surface is a new life waiting to be born….

     

    May I birth new acceptance and allow things to be themselves, since they can’t help it anyway!

     

     

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  • Self Love

    How is it that to love yourself, without another seems foreign?  Is it true, that we alone cannot experience love?   That our love feelings are dependent upon other, and what happens if there is no other?  What are we to do?

     

    It seems too that religion holds God, like another holds love. 

    How is that possible that in order to get to God, you have to find the right church, the right pastor, the right words?  And in order to get love, you have to find the right person?

     

    I had relied or had a lazy relationship, as my brother likes to say, with this thing called Love and God.  I knew both through the eyes of other.  It was their definition that I knew, I didn’t know my own.

     

    I blindly followed, submissively agreed with whatever they said, and I worked really hard to never displease, for they held my love, and my God.  I always believed that to turn from them, was turning away from Love and God. 

     

    I was shocked to know that God came with me.  He didn’t just live in Church, in a building painted white.  He was available in every tree, a bird, it’s song, the sunrise, in kind eyes, a gentle hand, there seemed no place that God wasn’t. 

     

    Love was harder for me to find, or love of self was harder.  I had been abused, tossed about and aside. I had to work my way into liking me, with all my imperfections.  This was definitely was an inside job.

     

    I knew that there was no way I would ever trust again, for others to hold my love.  I also was certain that it was up to me to be the keeper of it, if I were to find it.

     

    It is a hard thing to find, especially when you have no idea what it really is.  Maybe it was harder to recognize.  I simply went by feelings.  It  seemed to be the opposite of what I had been raised to believe. 

     

    Love is free, unattached, without agendas, no rules, expectations, free will, things I had never experienced before.

     

    I am still new at this relationship.  A love affair with Self.  I am living free, like stepping out of Plato's Cave.  It is overwhelming to look back and wonder how I survived, and then forward to a million potentials!  It seems that nothing I used in the Cave is needed out here!  And I am clueless on how to be.

     

    The brightness, the joy, the peace, and oh the freedom to be me.  How exciting this all is, and yet there are times I miss the cave, for it was all I ever knew.  I get those feelings less and less, as each new part of me grows.  Soon it will all fade into a distant past….where only the good times will rise.

     

    Until then, I am daring to be daring as I get comfortable in this free space.  This space of Love.

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  • Heart or mind

    Today was an odd day.  It was a day of hearts. 

    Hearts always seem to be of love, and togetherness, warm feelings of emotion.  Yet hearts can be full of broken dreams, of broken families, and broken hope.  Hearts are what connect us and what tear us apart. We meet each other heart to heart. 

    If our hearts don’t match, if the truth in your heart is not the truth in mine, our hearts turn away, like magnets flipped.  No matter how hard we want to try, there is nothing we can do to be close.

    There was a wedding in my family today, a sister’s son.  I did not go.  My heart felt no connection there, so I stayed away, rather than bring a body, with a resisting heart. 

    My heart resists because it knows where it would be going and with whom?  It knows now and I understand.  I stand by my heart, my soul and my truth.  I stand outside often.  It would hurt me more to go than it does to stay away. 

    This is new.  I used to be there in the center.  It will take time to become the one who is not there.  Do I miss them or me not being there?  Do I miss the old me, or the me I have yet to become? 

    My heart is so courageous, so brave and so sure.  I follow along feeling like an imposter.  I am hoping that by faking it until I make it, I will become better at this.  Maybe it is just my mind, my thoughts of me that is taking awhile catching up.  I am not at home in my mind yet.  In fact it seems I live more ‘out of my mind’ than in.

    Maybe you don’t have a broken heart, but a broken mind.  My mind thinks and believes from long past ways.  My mind hasn’t kept up with the truths of today.

    A broken mind, now that does sound much better. The mind has thoughts that are shattered by reality, thoughts that can’t do their magic and make it all better. 

    What breaks the heart is to want what isn’t possible.  What makes you go out of your mind is when beliefs no longer match reality.

    My heart really isn’t broken, the dreams and hopes all lived in my mind.  I now try and keep my mind from going too far into the future or to get left in a past I cannot change.  My mind is the cause of so much pain, not my heart.  My heart, well I think it just rides along happy and free, until a thought arrives.  

    A broken mind holds broken families, broken hopes and dreams.  Is it possible that a broken mind can cause a heart attack?   What damage can a broken mind do? 

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  • What do you want to be when you grow up?

    Now, that is an odd question to ask a child.  Here is a little version of a human, learning to be in this experience, and we want to know how it will all turn out.  We will breeze past your childhood, and all its fun, zoom way out into the future and have you decide now, with little experience what it is you want to do.  We have no idea what experiences, wonderful people and places he will happen upon as he moves forward that will pave the way.  We have no idea and they have even less of the way of it.

    Maybe it is the expectation of the question, that the child is a seer of the future.  Maybe for ourselves the question is layed out…we want to be assured of their future, because we are unsure of our own.

    I would challenge you instead to just go along for the ride in your own life.  To get rid of the itinerary and let life flow as it does.  To be excited in the state of unknowing, to be like an explorer and not know what is around the bend. 

    And isn't that what life is anyway?  Do you really know what will happen today?  Tomorrow?  Can you really map out our future so we will always be happy and content, well taken care of without any unpleasant surprises?  Is that possible?  Wouldn't it be more honest to just simply say…"It will be fun to see where you go and what you become? "

    Throw out your map of what you want them to become and sit back in the passenger seat of their lives and see where they take you!  This opens them up to living in the now without expectations of doing their lives wrong.  It is impossible to live it wrong. 

    Ok, I know you have expectations of them, and it they don't match you may be disappointed, but that is your problem, not theirs.  Guess you planned wrong!

    I love that each of us has our own lives to live and that each set is a surprise, a course we can't know what is around the bend.  If we are certain of ourselves, we can be certain we will know what to do as each bend unfolds! 

    It isn't what we will be when we grow up, but Who!

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  • Untaught Writer

    I have been attending the "Writer's Journey" a workshop at Finlandia College.  It meets, for free, one night a week for a semester.  It has been a wonderful experience for me to see the different types of authors.  I know I am naive, but I must have had an idea of what an author was, needed, looked liked, and how they were taught.  I was delighted to see they were like regular people.  Regular except they dared to put their thoughts, ideas, imaginations, feelings, desires etc in the written word, and then offered to share them with everyone.  It is like bringing someone into your mind!  Into your world, your areas of vulnerability, sorrow and fear as well as what excites you, brings you joy, and desire, to just name a few.  If done in a way that can hook an ear, it is quite profound.

    The more open and revealing and daring, the better.  It is story telling but with a way personal twist!  I had never looked at books from the Author's view.  I only knew what I liked and what I didn't….I just never sat down and thought, what makes a book grab me and what doesn't.  I know that we all have our interests, our areas that we want to explore, but even in our certain areas, there are Authors who can say it in a way that holds our attention.

    While trying to decide if I could write, I grappled with the Taught or being an Untaught writer. I truly didn't know if it was acceptable to step out into the Author space without training.  Are you literally allowed to just write.  Just write from what comes into your thoughts, to what has been your experience of this journey.  Is this a free landscape that anyone can wander on to?  Are there not writing police that will arrive and eventually ask me, "who are you and how dare you write, you have no idea of the structure, the grammar and even have trouble with spelling.  Don't you know it takes learning to do this well?  You have no certificate from a school of higher learning!  I think it best to leave the writing to the folks who are well taught and well versed in this area." 

    Well I am out here, I am going to try…and I haven't seen any Writer's Police yet.  I am not sure what they look like, but I best come up with a good excuse for being here, writing as a Untaught Writer.

    So, I asked myself one day in my journal, "is it really possible to be untaught."  I mean can we really live on this planet to the age of 50 and be untaught.  Surely I have learned something.  I do know words, the alphabet, and I can speak so others understand me.  I can write like I talk.  So am I really and untaught writer.  Maybe we can all be writers.  Maybe the scary part for many of us is that we won't be heard.  That what we have to say will not be important or trusted, or taken seriously.

    Untaught or is that an excuse to not write.  How about if we delete that phrase and instead say we can write, but we are untaught as to how to expose ourselves, our inner values to the world.  Maybe we are untaught as how to be courageous, truthful with ourselves.  To open ourselves up to new experiences, to explore areas that are fearful and unknowing.  Maybe I am an untaught explorer.

    Because to simply put words down that isn't hard.  To put words down that affect another, now that requires you go deeply within.  To put words down that will resonate with others, that will spark a cord of recognition, to honor the words with feelings and emotions that are true, now that is harder.

    Words…they have the power to change lives or wreck them.  They have the power to inflict pain, or to bring awareness into dark areas of our worlds.  They can make us laugh, bring us on a trip and descend us into the darkest of human kind.  I guess, we all have experiences to draw from, it is just are we able and willing to be the courageous ones to put it down on paper for all the world to see?  That is the question….Do you want to be the writer of the human experience or the reader of such.  But in the end, we are all experienced in the experience of being human.  We cannot be an untaught person. We all have been taught something, and we all have something to share.  What we need is the courage to begin. Begin where we are, unsteady, unstable, unused to writing.   If you can write, you are taught.

    I am not an untaught writer, but maybe a self taught writer.  I write in my own way, without rules and structure, hoping to carry my message in this vessel, an imperfect lady, just doing what she wants to do.  Write.  To put her truth out there.  To do it my way imperfectly. 

  • Imperfect

    I am trying to re-create the process of how I discovered I was an imperfect woman and how I broke down each meaning.  

    I pretty much looked up the meanings and checked myself to see where I was.

    im·per·fect [ im púrfəkt] adjective : Definition: 1. faulty: having a fault or defect: 2. not complete: lacking a part.

    per·fect (pûr f kt) adj. 1. Lacking nothing essential to the whole; complete of its nature or kind. 2. Being without defect or blemish: a perfect specimen.

    When you read both of the meanings, they are talking about whole or incomplete.

    In order to find out what a whole woman was, I had to know first of all what a woman was as defined by the dictionary.

    Woman. n. An adult female. female, lady.

     Female – noun . 1. a person bearing two X chromosomes.

    Now I was getting somewhere.  It seems that a perfect woman is an adult female of the Human Species. 

    How in the world is it so hard to be a perfect woman?

    I had lost all identity once, and it left me in a strange spot. I had no definitions anymore in my mind, I was just a body walking around, a female body.  What was also weird at that time, I went out looking for normal.  Normal can't be found.  What is normal and for whom? I had lost myself and I was out looking for myself in others. I know that this is hard for most to imagine….a blank mind, a mind with out a preconceived idea.  Even as I write that, " preconceived"…. it leads me to wonder what is conceived?

    con·ceive (k n-s v) v. con·ceived, con·ceiv·ing, con·ceives. v. tr. 1. To become pregnant with (offspring). 2. To form or develop in the mind; devise: conceive a plan to …  

    What preconceptions are in place in our minds, who put them there, and are they even true anymore as we sit here today? 

    Now back to the definition of imperfect, it was lacking, not complete.   

    Complete. adjective. lacking no component part; full; whole; entire; brought to a conclusion; ended; finished.

    The conclusion or end or finished product of you, will be when you die.  So until then, you are imperfect, not complete yet, parts are missing, we are lacking.   We are lacking the rest of our lives!

    Until we die, we are Imperfect.  I love that I am not a complete, that I am not a perfect woman, not whole, not over, not done yet!  Be imperfect until your last breath!  Walking in the land of imperfection there are no rules, nothing to strive for, you just get to be imperfectly you!  No one to follow, for we are all original works in progress!  

    Go out today and look at all the wonderfully imperfect people, and release yourself from the idea of being perfect, for what you are really wishing for is to die! 

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  • Susan Boyle

     

    If you haven't seen the youtube's video of Susan Boyle on the British's version "You Got Talent."  You must see her and listen.  Below are the words to her song.  This was a perfect example of an Imperfect woman.

    www.youtube.com

     

    I Dreamed a Dream Lyrics

    I dreamed a dream in time gone by
    When hope was high,
    And life worth living
    I dreamed that love would never die
    I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

    Then I was young and unafraid
    When dreams were made and used,
    And wasted
    There was no ransom to be paid
    No song unsung,
    No wine untasted.

    But the tigers come at night
    With their voices soft as thunder
    As they tear your hopes apart
    As they turn your dreams to shame.

    And still I dream he'll come to me
    And we will live our lives together
    But there are dreams that cannot be
    And there are storms
    We cannot weather…

    I had a dream my life would be
    So different from this hell I'm living
    So different now from what it seems
    Now life has killed
    The dream I dreamed.

     

  • Dare to be a work of Art

    Today is the day for my Art Quilt class.  We meet and share what we have created, what we need help with and mostly we share energy of inspiration and courage.  We are inspired to step outside of our patterns, our comforts and our ease.  We are cheered on as we leave the confines of patterns, rules and knowing.  Knowing the outcome, knowing where we are going, and knowing how to get there.

    I look at my Art Quilts as I look at Life.  I decide first what fabric I want to play with and maybe what new technique, or image I want to explore….By feeling I move on.  I either feel excited by what I am doing or not.  If not, I adjust something….and I know I am on to something when my whole body is involved and I forget that I am the cooker girl of the this house!

    Getting lost in Art is a wonderful thing.  You leave behind roles of mother, sister, wife, even  you.  You simply become the vehicle that creates a wonderful surprise for you and others.  I love not knowing where I am going, it keeps me present and it makes Art come alive.

    It is so exciting not knowing what the others will bring to share and how we all can learn and grow from each new way or even more importantly learn by others mistakes.  And in our group, Mistakes are just new design opportunities…..

    I try to live life as I create art.  I don't know where I am going, and how I will get there, nor do I know the outcome.  I stay with the process and I feel my way through!  Life is Art. The more Imperfect it is, the more interesting and intriguing and colorful the outcome.  Look at what excites you, who will add wonderful color to your world, what new experiences will add depth….and be open to allowing them in. It is up to you to open the door, to dream and participate!  Dare to step out of patterns that are not working, dare to try new techniques, dare to toss out rules and boundaries!  Dare to live fully and without knowing!  Dare to NOT know where you are going! Dare to be surprised!

  • Quotes I love….

    There are two ways to be fooled.  One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.  Soren Kierkegaard

    I am not keeping my distance because it is uncomfortable for me, but because it is uncomfortable for them.  Jodi Picoult (Plain Truth)

    Ignorance is constricted awareness….Deepak Chopra

    Good luck is opportunity & preparedness coming together…..Deepak Chopra

    A foolish Faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.  Einstein.

    When you say something in a wrong group – it will never be right, so you can not say anything wrong, when you don't belong to a group.  Gloria Steinem

    In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate.  Only certainty will do.  Anything less than certainty is unworthy of God.  Simone Weil

    Doubt means Don't.  Don't move. Don't answer. Don't rush forward.  (unknown)

    Depression means nothing matters.  Sadness, everything matters more…..unknown

    Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.  Maya Angelou

    …surrender in its place was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.  Maya Angelou

    Approval can't be trusted.  It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been. (unknown)

    One of the most powerful concepts within the disability rights movement is the idea that we all have Temporarily Able Bodies.  Jonathon Mooney – Short Bus

    As unnecessary as a well to a village on the banks of a river, so unnecessary are all scriptures to someone who has seen the truth.  Stephen Mitchell – Gita

    It is better to do your own duty badly than to perfectly do an others; when you do your duty, you are naturally free from sin. Stephen Mitchell

    Knowledge is better than practice; Meditation is better than knowledge; and best of all is surrender, which soon brings peace.

    First casualty of war, is the truth.  Winston CChurchill…..

    First casualty of Dysfunction is the truth…Carl Huhta

    All it takes to become an Artist is to start doing Art.  By living a life full of Art, we may achieve an Artful life.  Ellen Langer – On becoming an Artist

    In order to experience the Ultimate Reality you have to be out of your mind. – Neale Donald Walsh

    Our left brain is brilliant in it's ability to make things up, and fill in the blanks when there are gaps in its factual data.  In addition, during its process of generating a story line, our left mind is quite the genius in its ability to manufacture alternative scenarios…..Jill Bolte- Taylor (Stroke of Insight)

    Here are a few quotes from the book Blue Sweater.
    I am loving it, but it wordy.
     
    "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop
    to look fear in the face.  You must do the thing which you think you cannnot do."  Eleanor Roosevelt
     
    "Hope is the path on the mountainside.  At first there is no path.  But then there are people passing that way. And then there is a path."  Lu Xun
     
    "Poverty won't allow him to lift up his head; dignity won't allow him to bow it down."  Madagsy Proverb
     
    "When I despair, I remember that all through history, the ways of truth and love have always won.  There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall.  Think of it – always."  Gandhi
     
    "There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth, not going all the way, and not starting".  Buddha
    "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."
    – St. Francis of Assisi
     
    "Go to the people: Live with them love them start with what they know build with what they have.  But of the best leaders, when the job is done, the task accomplished, the people will say: 'We have done it ourselves.' "…Lao Tzu

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