One Year Later

May 9th is the anniversary of my literal Long Journey Over Water. Today, I celebrate one year of living in Madrid. Over this past year, many things happened: I had to let too many things go, the prince became a frog, faced radical loneliness, I put my skills, my tools and my allies to the test and I've managed to maintain some level of commitment to my goal of becoming a classical singer, with some amazing achievements. I realise that I haven't done brilliant most of the time, that I shouldn't have had so many expectations when I did the Crossing and that I should have taken everything more lightly. And maybe here is the key to the next year.

Today, we went to the Civil Registry to book a date for our wedding. Yes, we are marrying, which is fabulous news. We did not have the witness with us, and the clerk advised us to return after the San Isidro holidays, when it will be easier to book and to get the process to run faster, arriving very early in the morning and leaving the building before four p.m. We will do, and my ex-office colleague Javier had asked me once to be the witness. I'll give him a call today.

I am dying to be able to travel abroad, to visit my tribe, to start an actual career here, to study Spanish and Solfege. Let's see how the next year unfolds.

Fickleness

Today, I almost lost my solo on that new choir. It was the first rehearsal where I was supposed to sing the solo part with the pianist, and I wasn't feeling so sure. To be honest, I almost never do, but especially this time, my vocal coach on Tuesday told me she didn't see me ready to sing such a hard piece all by myself. I forgot she was just that, a vocal coach, awesome as she is, but her job is to spot weaknesses, and trust that they can be fixed with work, time and technique. So somewhere in my mind, the seed of doubt germinated and sprouted at the exact time I was to sing the part.

It helped that I anchored to my Core Worth, as Starhawk teaches in her "Twelve Wild Swans" book, but I didn't help that there was a newcomer who knew the whole Magnificat up and down, all four voices and the five solo parts and was offering to do it all, all the fucking time. The 1st soprano solo, the alto solo, singing basses or alto where tenor didn't have a melody, driving me crazy. When I started singing my solo, I slipped into a minor rallentando, and slowed down a bit compared to the piano. He was singing together with me, even though he wasn't supposed to, and he gradually grew his voice to swallow mine. I lost my anchor, froze and stopped singing altogether. Then the song ended, the piano stopped and the jerk started whispering things to me. Because he is French and has an awful accent, and because I was shaking like I was high on some outrageous new drug, I didn't understand a word of what he said, I just smiled and nodded. The director then asked me if we were "negotiating" the solo. I was shocked and couldn't reply. The new guy then said that he would gladly do it if I couldn't do it. In front of everybody, after I had failed on my very first try. Ever.

I was really frustrated and angry. I know from experience, from intuition and from my studies that I shouldn't stick so hard to and hold so tight a single opportunity, that it's not healthy, not smart and not my style, but singing is currently the only thing actually "working" in my life, and it seems so right for me to do this solo. It's like the next natural "small" step. I don't want to let it go, and most of the time, I believe I must not let it go, either.

I'll be studying harder the solo part now. The next rehearsal is on Tuesday, and I'll sing the solo again. This time, way better, I promise. So, I'll tell the director I WANT to do the solo and I'll do my best. If on the day of the performance I can't, Monsieur Volunteer will be there by my side as my substitute!

Landmark #4

from Carmen Estecha
to Awen
date Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 12:44 PM

Querido Awen quería comentarte si te gustaría cantar en un coro en el que estamos preparando el Magnificat de Vivaldi. No sé si conoces la obra, es de unos 14 minutos de duración y es muy bonita. Todas las voces son bien recibidas, y el concierto sería el 31 de mayo sábado a las 20,45h en la iglesia que está en el Metro de Iglesia (línea 1).

Esta tarde (excepcionalmente) vamos a ensayar de 20,30h a 22,00, muy cerca de la iglesia, en casa de una compañera, y si quieres venir me avisas y te recogemos con el coche. Los ensayos normales son los jueves de 18,30 a 20,30 en el Centro Cultural Galileo. El coro se llama Balulalow y el director es Mario Muelas. Tenemos profesora de canto y si te gusta puedes ser solista de una pequeña entrada en el número 2 de la obra.

Anímate, no es un coro maravilloso, pero son personas muy majas y nos lo pasamos muy bien. ¿Te apetece?

Gracias y un besote

carmeta

**************************

Does anybody else read the word "SOLISTA" in there or is it hallucination?? And I'm SO saying yes to this!!

Superhero

The meeting with the pianist was awesome. We (I) certainly still have a long way to go, but there was an immense reward in having a class fully devoted to repertoire skills. Raw musicianship, the kind of ability that pays off not just on the long haul, but progressively more and more as I continue on this path.

People have noticed and commented on my absence from the Book of Crossroads for the past months. Naturally, the main reason for the Silence is that I haven't really had the heart to whine helplessly all the time, and I could not see any stories going on that deserved sharing and recording. But also, I have been involved in a couple of projects that have been taking a lot of time, and rewarding me handsomely.

First, there is Starhawk's book 'Twelve Wild Swans'. Even though I could write extensively on the bias and poorly supported political stands of both authors, especially the co-writer Hilary Valentine (who clearly and outrageously manipulates language in a disgustingly sexist way), the tools, tried and tested for decades in their community, is a precious gift, and a very generous one. More and more, Witchcraft and Pagan literature grows bent, and heaps of books are published every year not to inform, but to advertise strictly-for-profit workshops and training programmes, and in the end they are little more than a scandalous waste of paper, ink and marketing science. "Twelve Wild Swans", on the other hand, is sincere, well-grounded and very complete in itself. It is a book you read, re-read, work with for several rounds and are left with a feeling of having gained something tangible and real. Something to call yours. Not Faery gold, but something that lingers, germinates and that you can carry on to share with people. The kind of seed that grows into a whole orchard. Here, the signature isn't larger than the picture. Even though the Reclaiming signature distracts you several times, it still respects you enough to offer something together with the signature, not just the signature itself for almost twenty dollars.

Also, I have been wasting an awful lot of time with an online game in Facebook called "My Heroes Ability". There is certainly something ageless and very appealing in superpowers and superheroes, especially for young gay men like myself, but this game not just allows you to have powers, it also lets you negotiate them, gang up and join a superteam, exchange superfavours (which we call buffs), and go on quests and missions together (or on your own).

There is certainly a reason why all cultures play games, and two of them are to improve your self-awareness, understand your strengths and spot your weaknesses before your enemies do; also, it helps you train and experience skills and cognitive possibilities you might not have the chance to practice in a "real-life" environment, polluted with expectations, charges and fear. My Heroes Ability has given me a quite rare opportunity to rethink and try out character shapes and movements by rehearsing them with Teleportation, Time Manipulation, Psionic skills and Flight.

I got to create and run the gay supergroup within the immense game community, the Lavender Society. In the capacity of Leader, I have honed my skills of service, protection, pride and humility. The group, the 16th largest within the game, comprises about 530 official members to date, plus honorary members who get to participate in discussions from time to time. In a scenario like that, you learn how fucking much you can offer your community and how important a community is for your own independence and self-reliance.

As an individual hero, it is amazing how many skills lie dormant within us. Superconfidence, mining for camaraderie, rethinking your habits and personal policies, fitting into a larger whole, outgrowing smallminded politics and gently brewing new talents that open new doors are all wonderful explorations I have been keeping myself busy with lately. Priceless.

Watching others in the game, I've seen actual heros without any superpowers offline shapeshift and overcome all kinds of personal, social and cultural issues within months. They (We) have developped strength, speed and mind powers that although not superhuman yet, are certainly what we humans were meant to feature before something got in the way.

Now, after being bitten by the radioactive spider, getting struck with Cosmic Rays and having awakened the X-Gene, I come back to my old, non-super power: Writing the whole extension of my boundless Spirit out.

Image: The Magic Lasso of Truth and its bearer, DC's superhero Wonder Woman.

Landmark #3

One of the requirements of living a Faerytale is to trust the Ugly Duckling against all odds.

I am glad I have. Tomorrow, 19th April, 2008, I am having my first session with a pianist. We will be doing an arietta by Mozart, and my amazing vocal coach will be present. W. Clement Stone was right, again: "whatever the mind can concieve it can achieve."

A tempo: For those who don't know yet, I got the gig with the choir I was dreaming of joining. Here is their last concert, last Sunday. Soon enough I'll be there with them. I'm still mostly a listener, but feeling really accomplished anyway.

Access the Power of Now

(by Eckhart Tolle)

Are you stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future that the present is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being "here" but wanting to be "there," or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It's a split that tears you apart inside.

Does the past take up a great deal of your attention? Do you frequently talk and think about it, either positively or negatively? The great things that you have achieved, your adventures or experiences, or your victim story and the dreadful things that were done to you, or maybe what you did to someone else?

Are your thought processes creating guilt, pride, resentment, anger, regret, or self-pity? Then you are not only reinforcing a false sense of self but also helping to accelerate your body's aging process by creating an accumulation of past in your psyche. Verify this for yourself by observing those around you who have a strong tendency to hold on to the past.

DIE TO THE PAST EVERY MOMENT

You don't need it. Only refer to it when it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this moment and the fullness of Being. Feel your presence.

Are you worried? Do you have many "what if" thoughts? You are identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary future situation and creating fear. There is no way that you can cope with such a situation, because it doesn't exist. It's a mental phantom. You can stop this health- and life-corroding insanity simply by acknowledging the present moment.

BECOME AWARE OF YOUR BREATHING

Feel the air flowing in and out of your body. Feel your inner energy field. All that you ever have to deal with, cope with, in real life -- as opposed to imaginary mind projections -- is this moment. Ask yourself what "problem" you have right now, not next year, tomorrow, or five minutes from now. What is wrong with this moment?

You can always cope with the Now, but you can never cope with the future -- nor do you have to. The answer, the strength, the right action, or the resource will be there when you need it, not before, not after.

ARE YOU A HABITUAL 'WAITER'?

How much of your life do you spend waiting? What I call "small-scale waiting" is waiting in line at the post office, in a traffic jam, at the airport, or waiting for someone to arrive, to finish work, and so on. "Large-scale waiting" is waiting for the next vacation, for a better job, for the children to grow up, for a truly meaningful relationship, for success, to make money, to be important, to become enlightened. It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.

Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don't want the present. You don't want what you've got, and you want what you haven't got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where you don't want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present.

For example, many people are waiting for prosperity. It cannot come in the future. When you honor, acknowledge, and fully accept your present reality -- where you are, who you are, what you are doing right now -- when you fully accept what you have got, you are grateful for what you have got, grateful for what is, grateful for Being. Gratitude for the present moment and the fullness of life now is true prosperity. It cannot come in the future. Then, in time, that prosperity manifests for you in various ways.

If you are dissatisfied with what you have got, or even frustrated or angry about your present lack, that may motivate you to become rich, but even if you do make millions, you will continue to experience the inner condition of lack, and deep down you will continue to feel unfulfilled. You may have many exciting experiences that money can buy, but they will come and go and always leave you with an empty feeling and the need for further physical or psychological gratification. You won't abide in Being and so feel the fullness of life now that alone is true prosperity.

GIVE UP WAITING AS A STATE OF MIND

When you catch yourself slipping into waiting ... snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be, and enjoy being. If you are present, there is never any need for you to wait for anything. So next time somebody says, "Sorry to have kept you waiting," you can reply, "That's all right, I wasn't waiting. I was just standing here enjoying myself -- in joy in my self."

BE HERE TOTALLY

These are just a few of the habitual mind strategies for denying the present moment that are part of ordinary unconsciousness. They are easy to overlook because they are so much a part of normal living: the background static of perpetual discontent. But the more you practice monitoring your inner mental-emotional state, the easier it will be to know when you have been trapped in past or future, which is to say unconscious, and to awaken out of the dream of time into the present. But beware: The false, unhappy self, based on mind identification, lives on time. It knows that the present moment is its own death and so feels very threatened by it. It will do all it can to take you out of it. It will try to keep you trapped in time.

In a sense, the state of presence could be compared to waiting. It is a qualitatively different kind of waiting, one that requires your total alertness. Something could happen at any moment, and if you are not absolutely awake, absolutely still, you will miss it. In that state, all your attention is in the Now. There is none left for daydreaming, thinking, remembering, anticipating. There is no tension in it, no fear, just alert presence. You are present with your whole Being, with every cell of your body.

In that state, the "you" that has a past and a future, the personality if you like, is hardly there anymore. And yet nothing of value is lost. You are still essentially yourself. In fact, you are more fully yourself than you ever were before, or rather it is only now that you are truly yourself. The past cannot survive in your presence.

Whatever you need to know about the unconscious past in you, the challenges of the present will bring it out. If you delve into the past, it will become a bottomless pit: There is always more. You may think that you need more time to understand the past or become free of it, in other words, that the future will eventually free you of the past. This is a delusion. Only the present can free you of the past. More time cannot free you of time.

THE POWER OF YOUR PRESENCE

Access the power of Now. That is the key. The power of Now is none other than the power of your presence, your consciousness liberated from thought forms. So deal with the past on the level of the present. The more attention you give to the past, the more you energize it, and the more likely you are to make a "self" out of it.

ATTENTION IS ESSENTIAL

Don't misunderstand: Attention is essential, but not to the past as past. Give attention to the present; give attention to your behavior, to your reactions, moods, thoughts, emotions, fears, and desires as they occur in the present. There's the past in you. If you can be present enough to watch all those things, not critically or analytically but nonjudgmentally, then you are dealing with the past and dissolving it through the power of your presence. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present.

Wild Swan Mood

The Wild Swans At Coole

THE trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?


Poem: William Butler Yeats
Canvas: Ben Galloway
Current Book: "Twelve Wild Swans", by Hilary Valentine and Starhawk

Fantasy

I'm very disappointed with my boyfriend. I'm on the verge of losing my current job due to my irregular situation here at the company and in this country, and frankly he proves time after time that he's a loser who bends his knees to the Vatican every single day we live together.

When I accepted this job, I agreed that I would regularize my laboral and residence situation here in Spain as soon as possible, because I was convinced Jose would agree to at least marry me. I say "at least" because after everything I have gone through to be here with him, the next logical step (a bit too late, but still on time) would be him showing some decision for the first time and legitimating our status as an actual couple and giving me the right to stand on my own two feet.

Very fortunately, Spain is one of the unique countries in this doomed world where gays have the same rights as straight citizens, and we have all circumstances from all sides showing us that marriage is all we need. For my job, for travelling, for visitting my friends in Sampa. Stuff I used to have, and left behind in order to be with him. And last time I approached the subject with him, he put the decision in his family's hands. What made me cross the Equator and the Atlantic was a man. I come here to find time and time again a catholic schoolboy who has never lived alone before and wants to be 18 forever. What's wrong with his generation??

I obviously don't mean wearing a peinera or a white gown with a long tail or do the bouquet thing, but I'm talking about the next natural step in order to take this relationship to a higher ground and a more fulfilling and solid constitution. Maturity. Something Jose deep inside abhors.

When I mention all the difficulties I have living here, he says I shouldn't be afraid because he can pay the bills, that I won't go hungry, homeless or deprived. That I can depend on him. But there's a whole universe more to life than relying on your boyfriend's money.

It's precisely because I certainly understand I cannot deposit on Jose my needs or expectations that I need him to help me up to the next step. So far, I got all I have here alone (or rather, with some incredible help from my father): the flight ticket, the job, the monthly international bank transfers in which I lose 20% of the money I make on fees and taxes, a tiny but promising social circle. Now is the time, for the first time, to get to do something as a couple, so that I'm at least entitled to go after some actual language tuition, the right to come and go and minimum professional stability.

I simply can't understand how small a person's mind can be in order to not understand this after eight months living together. We don't have a mortgage to pay, or kids to send to University. We should be living big. Frankly, I am not making any other sacrifices for this relationship, in part because I don't have anything else left to be sacrificed, but also because it takes two to tango. And when we went to Buenos Aires to celebrate our first year together, we couldn't tango. He was arguing and putting out sarcasm shows the whole lesson.

This morning on my Morning Pages, I reminisced the first movie we saw together that both of us enjoyed (the other one was "Earth"), "Pan's Labyrinth"/"El Laberinto del Fauno". The most impressive aspect of the experience is that we saw completely different films that December evening. Jose saw a schizophrenic small child, afraid of the terror adults imposed on her. I saw a warrior tale of a brave runaway coming back home, retrieving her royal and real conditions and dying away to a world of death, famine, fear, abuse and illusion as she gained freedom and moved on to her actual life.

Figures. The silver screen is but a mirror, and after a whole life of storytellings, I know I can't deny the power of stories to shred illusions and embrace Life. He's right when he accuses me of living in Fantasy. Isn't Fantasy another way to bail through the tides of Illusion and reach out for the Truth? He wouldn't be able to speak the truth straight--never have. He's the master and the slave of Sarcasm.

There's only many ways to tell the Truth, and I don't share one with the 38-year-old catholic schoolboy.

Image: the Little Mermaid, Andersen's hero who leaves her royal condition behind, deprives herself of her voice, gives back her swimming tail and ends up being unable to stand on her legs, all in order to be with somebody who in the end had never been with her. A lonely creature of the Crossroads.