Baby Sweet Baby, Are You Alright?

I simply love and adore Lucinda William's music. I discovered her in 2004, the same year I turned 50. The same year I was hit by a tsunami love wave, swept off my feet and delivered back unto myself. I saw her live at the California World Music Fest in Grass Valley. She just melted my heart and I haven't been able to get enough of her since. She is just so hot and makes my heart go pitter patter and open really wide. Or if I'm feeling a little feisty and cranky, she's good for that too. Her music is kind of a country-folk-rock and the funny thing is that those are my three, least favorite music genres. No matter. Lucinda Williams rocks hot, sassy, and deep and she moves me. These three videos below are two of my theme songs, a dedication of sorts to love. The first one is of her performing Are You Alright?, from her newest album, West. The second two are the song Essence, which is on her album of the same name. The first of these two is a studio recording with pictures of Russell Crow. No, I don't have a thing for Russell Crow really but he is awfully sexy. I like the recording. In the second one you get to see Lucinda singing it live. Don't stop with these two albums though as all of her songs are incredible. She is an awesome poet, very sweet and oh so talented--one of my very most favorite musician performers. She sings so much of what my heart is saying.

Are You Alright?
~ Lucinda Williams

Are you all right?
All of a sudden you went away
Are you all right?
I hope you come back around someday.
Are you all right?
I haven't seen you in a real long time.
Are you all right?
Could you give me some kind of sign?
Are you all right?
I looked around me and you were gone.
Are you all right?
I feel like there must be something wrong.
Are you all right?
Cause it seems like you disappeared.
Are you all right?
Cause I've been feeling a little scared.
Are you all right?

Are you sleeping through the night?
Do you have someone to hold you tight?
Do you have someone to hang out with?
Do you have someone to hug & kiss you?
Hug & kiss you
Hug & kiss you
Are you all right?

Are you all right?
Is there something been bothering you?
Are you all right?
I wish you'd give me a little clue.
Are you all right?
Is there something you want to say?
Are you all right?
Just tell me that you're OK.
Are you all right?
Cause you took off without a word.
Are you all right?
You flew away like a little bird.
Are you all right?
Is there anything I can do?
Are you all right?
Cause I need to hear from you.
Are you all right?

Are you sleeping through the night?
Do you have someone to hold you tight?
Do you have someone to hang out with?
Do you have someone to hug & kiss you?
Hug & kiss you
Hug & kiss you

Are you all right?

Are you all right?

Are you all right?

(Edited) One of my kind readers has pointed out that the owner of this video (above) doesn't allow it to play embedded on my site. You can listen to it on You Tube by clicking this link here. But if you click on the menu above, it will bring up several Lucinda Williams clips that do play, so check them out. It's a little weird, it seems that you either have to double click the menu or click the menu and then the arrow over Russell Crow and then the actual menu of different clips appear. Play with it a bit. The clip below works fine.

Artist/Band: Williams Lucinda
Album: Essence
Song/Lyrics: Essence

Baby, sweet baby, you're my drug
Come on and let me taste your stuff

Baby, sweet baby, bring me your gift
What surprise you gonna hit me with

Refrain:
I am waiting here for more
I am waiting by your door
I am waiting on your back steps
I am waiting in my car
I am waiting at this bar
I am waiting for your essence

Baby, sweet baby, whisper my name
Shoot your love into my vein

Baby, sweet baby, kiss me hard
Make me wonder who's in charge

(Repeat Chorus)

Baby, sweet baby, I wanna feel your breath
Even though you like to flirt with death

Baby, sweet baby, can't get enough
Please come find me and help me get fucked up

(Repeat Chorus)

Your essence
Your essence

I'm off to the World Music Fest tomorrow. Last year was the first year I missed since it started--what ten, years ago? Jerry and I volunteered for the first seven years or so as our service to the happening new festival. We worked the beer booth for several years and that was a happening place to be. I remember the year the band FRUIT made it's debut and half the women at the festival couldn't help but feel the stirrings of their bi-sexuality--I'm not kidding. Last year was the first year I missed and darn, Michael Franti and Spark-n-Cinder both played. I was at a 10 day master training for the Enlightenment Intensives in the lovely Sierra Nevada mountains and the sacrifice was more than worth it. This year my daughter and three grandbabies (trash duty, an easy gig) are working the festival. Looking forward to a wonderful weekend.

My Stuff

More Foolsgold.

In chapter 21 Susan leads us into the language of colors and I think of my relationship with colors over the years. When I was a young girl my favorite color was blue. My five year old granddaughter called me from Colorado on my birthday and asked, "What's your favorite color gramma Adrienne?" and I told her blue. Her favorite is purple. I remember a time when if you looked into my closet purple was the predominant color you would see. Then it was green. Now I mostly enjoy wearing brown, black, gray, army green, off white. And I like to highlight black with red and white. I still like to wear blue too, and green. I like the blue with my eyes.

Go here to read a color therapy chart and scroll to the bottom of the page and take the color test. It will only take you a minute and it's a very interesting experience.

In chapter 22 Susan offers up Rainer Maria Rilke

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

I hold on to, and go after things tenaciously. I think it would do me well to practice just as tenaciously, the art of releasing.

Susan works diligently to dig up an artemesia plant. She's making space for something new. She asks,

"Where do you need to let go in your life to make space for something new?"

As I contemplate this letting go, a sadness arises. I'm letting go of my mother, there's not much of a grounding with her anymore. She's 84 with Alzheimer's and although she could likely be around for many more years, I can't depend on things staying the same with her. I'm getting that the only way I'm going to be comfortable in my relationship with her is to go with the uncertainty, to just let her be and love her the best I can. Each and everyday my relationship with her offers me a new opportunity to let go and be with what is. The love is there. It's always there.

I'm letting go of wanting others to want what I want. I find that especially difficult when there has been a bonding in the past, a shared excitement and wanting of the same thing, a melding of minds and hearts and souls. Sometimes I think I just choose to be blind, trying to keep people in a box of the past, striving to keep the shared connection going when they have already moved on. When I realize they are no longer in that sweet space, I think they are rejecting me personally and I get my feelings hurt. I get so sad sometimes. Attachment is fun when I get what I want but it's heartbreaking when I don't.

Susan says, "What do you resist releasing...A habit, a fear, an idea, a belief...a person, a relationship."

god's mini-storage

This is the title of chapter 23 and I learn from Susan that the word God is abbreviated G-d in Jewish holy texts because it's considered sacrilege to write or say it. I always wonder where these type of injunctions come from, what the original intent was. As Susan talks about God's mini-storage, "Where things begin to coalesce. A vast, mysterious shelter for everything." I'm reminded of my move from hell, April before last. Jerry and I lived in our previous home for ten years and we were moving. We had rented one of those huge 10' by 20' dumpsters and had filled it to over flowing just seven months earlier. A lot of it was just trash, old appliances that hadn't been hauled off, along with lots of yard debris, but a good portion of it was STUFF.
Lots and lots of belongings that over the years, had filled our garage, closets and every corner of the physical space we had appropriated for ourselves. Now we were moving out and I was once again hauling things to the trash, filling boxes upon boxes to give away, along with more and more boxes that a friend came and picked up for a yard sale. Where does this STUFF come from? I was cleaning out and paring down. But my new home didn't have the available storage capacity that the old place had and I just couldn't let go of enough of this STUFF to not be obliged to rent a storage unit.

I'm not kidding when I say this was the move from hell. I descended into purgatory. I was definitely in God's grace but imperfectly purified and before I was going to be allowed into my new home I was going to be scrubbed! As I've written about before, I have a tendency to understand things through symbolism. I make a lot of meaning from the specific circumstances of my life. This move was a huge letting go of the past and moving on into my future, similar, on a much milder scale of course, to what I figure my death will be like some day. I realized that my storage unit was like being trapped in purgatory and I was going to have to sort through every last "box" before I would be able to move on from this life into the next. Death will be all the more difficult if I haven't practiced letting go and expertly honed my skill at non-attachment. All the unprocessed STUFF, of my life will be there waiting for me to sift and sort through. All my material possessions, the "to do" lists and important papers to organize, basket of clothes to mend, relationship issues to be tended to, lies to expose, truths to tell, all of it. I know very well what I need to take care of, what to put in its rightful place and what to let go of. I know. What I don't deal with now I will deal with when I die. I want to die peacefully so I know what I need to do. I know.

This was my own God's mini-storage experience and it was very, very intense. I got a preview to the coming attractions of my death. This is were all the STUFF of my life will coalesce when I die. I know it will be intense, like birth. But I think it doesn't have to be painful. The trailer (which was more like a virtual reality) was a showing of just one possible option. It woke me up and offered me some awareness about attachment, about taking care of business. It's my choice. I know. I'm going to do my work now, or later. It's going to get done. I know.

And my mom is teaching me lots about this right now. Lots. Thank you mom. It's a bittersweet pill but I acknowledge the gift.

Susan asks, "Is there anything is your life that needs to fall apart?" She says, "The mystical rabbis (including Jesus) teach that one has to be alone to contemplate and honor and enter Ein Sof, the infinite." She talks about being, "Alone and falling. Alone and shattered. When shattered...we can begin to mend, tikkun, hebrew for "repair". We can experience rebirth, begin to take in the infinite, through cracks that let in the light."

My love relationships, everyone of them are leaving me alone and falling, alone and shattered right now. My mother, Jerry, others...I'm just feeling a lot. I don't mean that things are bad or that my relationships are falling apart (Jerry is still my rock). Maybe they are just being rearranged, like furniture. I don't know how to use words to describe what I'm going through. I feel myself falling, shattering, and repairing all at once. It's intense for me right now. I have big cracks in me and I'm absorbing lots of healing light.

Teach me, like you, to drink creation whole
And casting out my self, become a soul.
--Richard Wilbur

Bloggers For Positive Global Change

On Friday, July 6, 2007 (my birthday) Pamm at My Secret Spiritual Dance tagged me for making a difference with a "Bloggers for Positive Global Change" award.

The meme started at Climate for our Future, with its mission to "change the world we live in for the better." Well, it seems that the nature of this award is evolving from its main focus on the condition of the environment of our beautiful blue-green planet earth, to the environment of our sex lives, and spiritual awakening. All the same stuff really. Intimately related at least. Besides, I did do a Live Earth 07/07/07 post here, so at least you know I am a little aware and I do care about our natural environment and creating a positive global change, even if I don't write about it much directly. And my husband runs a recycling center for goodness sake.

Here's what Pamm says about my blog:

Adrienne at Tell Me What Another Is, talks about her journey of Spiritual Polyamory, Enlightenment Intensives, and being gently present to life. Her blog speaks to an online community and I also know she is serving the community she lives in by opening eyes and hearts to loving more.

Perhaps opening eyes and hearts to loving more is some of the most important work we can do towards creating a positive global change.

And now I get to tag five others.

I'm new to all this and I really don't have that many connections out in the blogasphere but here goes.

1) Gillette at Ex-Courtesan in Transition (Again). She is smart, sassy, sexy, and spiritual. A very deep thinker who takes you on all sorts of exciting adventures into love and life.

2) We Survived The Teens is the Ramblings and Reminiscences Of A Crazy Wisdom Grandma. Great stories, insights, and understanding of kids, parents, family dynamics and all sorts crazy wisdom related through been that, done there. Funny, sweet, sad, provocative, inspiring and full of lottsa love.

3) Greenwoman at Honestly Speaking is a sweetheart who writes on and on about tantra, relationships, sex, BDSM, polyamory, spirituality etc. One of my favorite things about her blog is her soft nature and gentle kindness.

4) Mattisse at Mistress Mattisse's Journal is a professional dominatrix and one incredibly powerful woman. She's polyamorous and often writes about her love relationships with her two partners, Max and Monk. Mattisse excites (and scares) me. She is no-nonsense, intelligent, and also very kind and friendly in a mean and sadistic sort of way. If you are interested in learning about the BDSM kink scene, this Seattle Mistress is a must read.

5) My friend Edrid just started this blog as a dedication to Yogeshwar Muni (Charles Berner) who died on June 24th, 2007. New posts are being added as they arrive from friends and students. I never met Yogeshwar, who I've always known as Charles Berner. He was a powerful spiritual teacher who developed the Enlightenment Intensive, back in 1968. This process, which uses dyad communication is widely acknowledged as a breakthrough tool for spiritual awakening. Many Enlightenment Masters such as Edrid and Osha, have continued on with Yogeshwar's work which is currently one of my most favorite and powerful spiritual practices.

So thank all of you for your contributions as bloggers for positive global change.

Rules of the Award:
1. When you get tagged, write a post with links to up to 5 blogs that you think are trying to change the world in a positive way.
2. In your post, make sure you link back to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Leave a comment or message for the bloggers you’re tagging, so they know they’re now part of the meme.
4. Optional: Proudly display the “Bloggers For Positive Global Change” award badge with a link to the post that you write up.

Vulnerability Will Save Us

More Foolsgold.

In chapter 20 Susan says, "It's often difficult for me to know when to stop--talking, thinking, writing, gathering, gluing."

I still often go too far, too long, too much. But I've been catching myself sooner lately, right past the point, and it becomes obvious to me that enough happened awhile back.

The river is within us--T.S. Eliot

And Francisco Alarcon's poem "Drought."

despite dry years
siempre verde inside

Yes, the river is within me. I feel it coursing through my veins. It is always green inside, no matter the drought that often leaves my throat parched. I understand this so much better now. I have an inner retreat and I'm getting more experienced at seeking it out, going to for relief.

I find myself returning again and again to my friend Luisa's word's that Susan quotes. Speaking to kids locked up in juvenile hall she tells them fiercely, "Don't you do anything to get locked up, to jeopardize your freedom." I can feel the loving fierceness in these words and I repeat them to myself. Tears come to my eyes and I read the words again. They are powerful. I see Luisa's face and I miss her. It's been years. She is one gently powerful woman.

Why am I so emotional today? More tears as I read. "The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote...

it is only our vulnerability that will save us

Maybe when we screw up we create an opening to connect us to others. Especially if we screw up don't run away. Admit it. Try again."

And I remember my friend Patrick's words when he once wrote to me about "exposing the soft underbelly". It's what we are doing here, having human relationships, being vulnerable, caring about others.

07/07/07

Hey, thanks Madonna.

Live Earth

Are you ready to answer the call?

Learn ways to reduce your carbon footprint.
Today's the day that people all over the world are taking the pledge. Go to www.liveearth.org to learn more and to take the pledge.

The theme for this year's Burning Man is The Greenman. Black Rock City is working to raise the consciousness of all its citizens. The intention is to help folks understand how their participation in this event impacts the environment. There are many simple things that each of us can do to reduce our carbon footprint during our eights days out on the playa. To learn more click here.

More Birthday

Here are some birthday pics that make me happy.

Yesterday was both lovely and fucking hard. I'm feeling fairly wrung out today.

So many blessings...and yet why is it so hard to accept all of what is?

Time with my mother yesterday just broke my heart. She has Alzheimer's and is struggling so.

And some stuff up with my kids.

Thank god my husband is my rock.
He is so here for me.


And everyone else who is here for me and are so good to me. I am given so much and I count my blessings for sure. So many choices of what to focus on...I know how fortunate I am...and yet this sadness weights me down. It will pass. But for now I'm feeling it and giving thanks for life, for love...and for raw food key lime pie. Yummy.

meMeME

Adrienne Mary Parker
July 6, 1954
San Francisco, California
Born to Yvonne and William
A girl.
The nurse said, "Oh, she's a fair one."
A towhead with curly hair and blue eyes.
Cancer Sun
Libra Moon
Scorpio Rising

Rumi Inspired Poem
To Me on My Birthday
From my sweet husband Jerry.

I'm mad with this love
This elixir of madness drives me out into the wilderness
feeds me, splays me open, till all I experience is my heart burning with love
All I see is this burning flame pulsing with the passion to love
Where lover, loving and loved are one

Love and gratitude to my family and friends who showered me with love and attention today.