My new motto.

Lebenskünstler = master of the art of living (Sourced from http://leisurearts.blogspot.com/2006/08/lebensknstler-leisurearts-notes.html )


I received a God-given phone call today from my grandmother. I've been feeling very VERY down after being cut from a dance team I shoudn't have been on, anyhow. I've been trying to deal with increased work and a feeling of needing to nurture my professional life, while feeling quite guilty about the time spent away from the family. My grandmother called just now, and told me to pass a message onto my mom, that she had foudn the bridge for her cello that would replace the broken bridge. She was fearing she'd lost it. My mom is napping, however, and I got to chit chat with her for a little while. I was explaining my life a little, and trying to describe that staying home with the blinders on was stifling and miserable, but being out and about too much was too manic and caused a different kind of imbalance. Omi said "there's a word for this in German, 'lebenskünstler', and it means, 'artist of life'. You need to find the happy medium and live well." there you have it. It made me cry. It's something I've heard like every day my entire life, but it was exactly what i needed to hear right now.

Those Germans have a word for everything.

I want to be a lebenskünstler, and I will be. If I feel the yearning to master something, it will be this. Not an aspect of of what I must balance, but balance itself. I will be my zodiac in perfect symmetry. If I feel the need to shine and perform with astonishing mastery, I'll dedicate myself to health, to the perfection of the art of living. Everything else is not only soul-killing, but murder on the peace of those who need and love me.

Oscar Wilde once purportedly said "I put my talent into my work, but my genius into my life." A suitable introduction to this week's entry, Lebenskünstler. Literally translated, it means "life-artist." ... He is a Lebenskünstler. Someone who pieces together his living from various activities that, collectively, bring in just enough money to live. No office, no suit, no boss, no rules. German has a word for such people, and English doesn't. There's even a higher form of Lebenskünstler, and that is the Überlebenskünstler, or "survival artist." -- from the blog "LeisureArts"

I'm going to find out more about Oscar Wilde. He's been placed in front of me for a very strong reason. I will follow through.

Question for the Clerics.

I understand that heaven is more a state of existence than a place. In my Orthodox upbringing, we're taught that heaven is how, after death, a soul that loves God and His ways is in union with God, and in ecstatic joy, wrapped in the fullness of God's intimate love. Embraced by His love, the soul is now home and one with its creator. Hell, on the other hand, happens to a soul that has not grown to love God's ways or God's love, and now that it has passed over to the other side, lives in the eternal torment of not being able to accept, perceive, or take joy in the boundless love all around it. I would also add that it lives in contact, eternal yearning for a love and peace that it can never have, even though it exists more closely than ever.

So then, the idea is that our time on earth is time for us to condition ourselves to be open to God, to allow Him in to shape our souls, in preparation for living with him after the end, so that we become something that can receive his love, totally. In this way we will be enraptured by Him, and not alien and unfit for the love He has for us.

Question is, is it enough to WANT to love God, to yearn to be with him, to know the relief his love spells, even though you cannot stop sinning, even if you try? Is repentance enough? What if I can never truly repent? If I confess and weep and long for change, and I go and do the same thing again, have I really repented? I know this is the exact issue Christians lament and rejoice in at the very same time. It's this state of totally predictable and inescapable sin from which we are delivered. It's very, very hard to accept, sometimes, that we live in a redeemed state, no matter what we do. While the joy of Christianity lies in the idea that if we repent, believe that we are saved and forgiven, and are loved in God's eyes, it's so hard to let go of self-loathing when you steer yourself wrong. I guess, ultimately, it's more humbling to accept that you're loved despite your mistakes and your hurtful crimes, that you've marred a beloved soul, that all you have to do is keep loving yourself the way God loves you, that you have to continue to love in order to grow love. I can't explain it well enough, but it's almost humiliating to be shown love after you've messed up, royally. You wind up feeling like a dirty-faced, crying child.

Is it enough to want God? Or do you have to be living some kind of better life than what I keep getting seduced by? Or is everything I'm experiencing and choosing part of the plan to break me down, so I will finally allow His light to shine in? I've seen it before, I've been filled and warmed by it, I've been saved by it. I yearn for it now, and desperately hope I'm not unreachably far from it.

Catch and Release.

One thing I've discovered in writing this blog is that it seems to permanently release whatever it is I'm obssessing about... the things I write here, when captured in words, get released into the universe and don't come back. I don't want them back. I give them up as if I were igniting them and allowing them to become ash. The universe can have it.

In the few private moments I have right now, I wish to release my hate. All day long I've been saying, in my head, like a broken record (or scratched CD?), "I hate my life. I hate this. I hate living here. I hate him." It just keeps burning a track in my brain, and I'm afraid it'll burn so deeply I won't be able to emerge. Right now I feel like I love this track. I want to sink into it and destroy everything I hate, or run away from it, at least. I want to indulge it, and with a great amount of self-discipline, and maybe a smear of hope, I write it here. I want, more that I desire the indulgence of these passions, to be free. I read a post on a forum I visit that quotes Dostoyevsky; a quote about divine and universal love, despite all things. Right at this moment, when I feel like I'd love to crawl into bed and simply cement my feelings of hate with the seal of sleep, I read the thing I need to hear to free myself. Love is a choice. The quote is imperative.

COMPASSION MANDALA...from The Brother's Karamozov, by Dostoyevsky


...have no fear of human sin. Love people even in their sin, for that is the semblance of divine love and the highest love on earth...Love all of creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. love every leaf, every ray of light. love the animals, the plants, love everything. If you love everything you will percieve the divine mystery in things. Once you percieve it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

I can live freely and openly and deeply in love, or I can indulge this hate some more. Is this hate serving a purpose? It's making me mope around like a teenager. It's also making me want change, which we need. What do I see that needs changing?

I see our children really being ignored. We use the TV so much. We choose to play on the computer rather than engage with them. This is so far from the lifestyle I encouraged at our former home. Why has it become the status quo here, so easily?

Speaking of computers, we use it for our pleasure and release. I use it for communication. To say what I really feel. He uses it for his entertainment, to feel connected, while he was NO CONNECTION to friends in the real world. He also uses it to look at naked ladies doing what he wishes I were doing, but can't, because he'd rather be entertaining himself at the computer. I hate this. I always have. And it never seems to change. I'd like it to change. I'd like him to come to me and start a conversation. I'd like him to ask me to go for coffee with him. I'd like him to offer me a massage, impromptu. I'd like him to talk to me. Have fun with me. Want me exclusively, find ways to entertain me, find ways around our situation to sneak in some love. He doesn't work at it. We're never a we. I've talked about this before. Do I need to talk about it again?

We're in my parents' house. I want that to change, too. I feel like getting a house is an inordinately heavy task for me to strive for on my own, and he seems content to wait here. I am not. I need out. I can wait a couple of months, and then I need my own space again. Money. It's pressing its ugly foot against my neck. I vowed to never become enslaved by thoughts of getting a house, getting more money... because it's soul-killing. I've done it once before, and I'm not interested in feeling that way again. Can I be like a patient Jedi and just sit and breathe and wait for the proper time? Why am I so impatient?

Because I'm filled with loathing, boredom, disapproval, restlessness and hate here. I don't want to deal with the things I see, the piles of work that never seem to get done, the effort it takes to get anywhere. I'm tired of the floors that need work, the walls that have been done poorly, the paint job that needs to get FINISHED after six bloody years. I'm too close to everyone, and have no space in which to be creative. Or alone. Or sexual. Or relaxed. This is why I want to leave.

I need release from all of this. If my mind could open up and find the space it needs just inside my head, if I could just feel love and enjoy the closeness, if I could just embrace the faults and have patience and talk and change the things that can be changed, I think I would feel that freedom I desire so greatly.

And even as I write that, there is a hard little seed in me that hopes somehow, my wish won't be granted. I have a miserable little grouch inside that's sabotaging these desires and tells me I'm not speaking the truth. All I want, it says, is true freedom, and to abandon everything for the sake of me. Truth is, just me is boring, useless, disloyal and misanthropic. Too quiet. Rash. Impulsive. Lonely. Desperately, coldly lonely... a loneliness that seems to echo and clang in its harshness. I don't even find very many people pretty anymore. It's as if the loneliness is taking from me the ability to be intrigued by anyone, thus stabilizing itself. It likes living in me. It seeks company, but hates it at the same time. Because weirdly, it feels good feeling so shitty. You can say so many awful things when you're stuck inside your head. You can utter things that feel like truth, that may actually be truth... but I suspect are not the bigger truth. The Truth with a capital "T". Loneliness and despair is like some kind of miserable masturbation. I hate it. I've fought it for a long time, and I'm standing on the verge.

The true me is asking the universe to take this from me, along with all the other junk, and hear the feeble voice that wants to be full of light, forgiven, pure, loved and loving again. Please help me forget this misery. Make me ready to release it.