Express YourSelf (original) (raw)

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Below are the 5 most recent journal entries recorded intalks between helen and sea's LiveJournal:

Monday, February 13th, 2006
_12:09 pm_[cynsimone]	I wanted to post this to Zendiks of myspace unite but lost my nerve...I see it's been a few months since people have posted here. I realize that Celene and Gabriel are pretty busy with Uriah (sp?) and trying to keep some cash coming in ... I want to respond to Brandon's post by giving a brief summary of my Zendik history.I moved in when I was 17 back in 1978. Wulf and Arol and Fawn had just driven over from the Keys and Gainesville, Florida. Robb and Maddie were with them. Lore had just joined with Robin from Laguna Beach and they were all living in a house in the burbs in Fallbrook, California. They were basically there because Gerry, Wulf's mom, had cancer and they needed to have a place they could give her a nature cure.We soon got the Bonsall farm from Gerry, where we lived for most of the next two years. During that time I was fortunate to have a lot of one on one time with Wulf and he trained me to be the lead singer and musician in the Zendik band (Orgazstra or Electric Street Orgaztra we called it). (I had brought with me an eight-foot marimba and a 4 octave marimba but I had always read music, never learned to improvise before this.) That was amazing. I became a core Zendik and embraced the philosophy in a major way.The way the Farm was set up, Wulf and Arol and Fawn and I and Lore stayed in the main house and others took trailers, tipis, tents on the property. There was some variation on that over time but mainly that's how it was so I had a lot of contact with Wulf and Arol which was good. Some of you (and Fawn in a recent newspaper article) were saying they never saw Wulf and Arol together. That was not my expereience at all. Every evening when Fawn was 3 and 4 they would get together to hang out while Wulf was in the bath or just hang out in his room to talk or watch TV.Anyway, I left because I kept giving money and possessions to them and I felt I was still being treated (by Arol) as "someone just off the street" (at times). Maybe that would not have mattered so much if it weren't that I had several guy interests who had been run off the farm when they didn't get along with Arol. I was Wulf's gofer, right hand gal, massage therapist and lead musician, which I loved but I kept realizing that Arol would always be his mate, not me. (Maybe if I would have stayed this would have been straightened out or I would have understood my place was enough but I don't think so.) It looked like Wulf and Arol got to be mates but nobody else was hip enough to do that without getting their "square tank filled." A couple other things, I don't really know what priority these were in me leaving but I was still struggling with an eating disorder which wasn't getting better and Arol's ridicule at times seemed, to me, to lock me into the disorder rather than open a way out for me--I felt I was the "token" for this issue and it wouldn't change until I changed it myself, out there, and then came back without this problem. I also felt if I could start a new Zendik chapter in the world (i.e. group) that then Arol would really believe that I was a Zendik to the core and I'd be a hero. (Part of that plan was to bring back a LOT more money.) Last but not least, we were at a sort of dead period with our band (we had just moved out to Palm Desert after a few failed attempts at relocating elsewhere) and even though Wulf had some local agent come out to discuss cutting an album I was in a block--Wulf and Arol assured me that every artist goes through this--but I was bummed out. This guy I had been seeing just left plus my beloved flute player had left. So I sort of, in my discontent and angst, told Wulf that if he put the trailer back in my name that I had given them that I would stay. But he said that "all the kids would want that" and he tried to hug me but I wouldn't hug back. (He said it was like trying to hug a piece of cardboard.:-)) I left then but went back when the group was in Topanga about two and a half years later. I had managed to keep Z foremost in my mind for most of the time away and Wulf told me, "Whatever you've been doing out there, it was okay." and I was back ... but then some other stuff happened ... some other post perhaps. It had to do with being taken away by my "old man" practically at gunpoint and Wulf screaming at me, "Fuck You" for leaving. It was the most horrible day of my life up to that point. It was a non-choice. I still wished they wouid have trusted me instead of blaming me for leaving with this guy. But it was the same story--Arol wanted the pink slip to my RV so she could "protect" me from this guy. But I knew what that led to--more complete dependence on her and the power she would have over me each day. ... (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 1st, 2005
_2:28 pm_[emeraldimajia]	What is it that I want to say? That I miss that tender being-taken-care-of feeling that I had sometimes at Zendik--like when Rinn redid my bed, on Christmas Eve--when one of the shoppers left my purple velvet tank top on my bed--when I was so sad I wanted to shoot myself, over breaking up with Kel, and Arol offered to help us try again.... There were so many, many times like that, when someone did something wonderfully personal for me--just knew exactly what I needed, and offered it to me. And then there were the times when I felt like an invisible nobody, utterly unessential to anyone, who had to scratch & claw to get what she needed.... But that's not what I want to talk about now. I want to talk about sweetness, and goodness, and the lovely & limitless capacity of humans for generosity--especially in a place where we all belong to each other, and there's no money. Fawn in particular--sometimes I think of her as being some kind of tyrant, the heir to the throne, as the bitter exes say, but then I remember when I was playing Merceilia in the Oraculum and Fawn was doing my make-up, and she had just the most gentle hands--her touch on my face felt like a lovely caress, and I luxuriated in every moment of it. I guess I just never really got to know her--I mean here & there I know I laughed & joked with her--I know I was just a person with her--but there always seemed to be such a vast gulf between us--she having been born there, and having two kids, and so much responsibility--being this personification of Zendik philosophy. And I felt so little & inelegant, in her presence. Competitive? You bet I was. But also just longing somehow to be her friend, and treat her just as I would any other woman my age. I always thought I came to the Farm, in part, because of Fawn--that I was meant to be her friend, that there was some signal sent out in the year 1976--also 1977--to other babies being born near the time when she was, that there was a place we should all meet at, in twenty years, so we could be with each other. There was a clutch of woman there, when I was there, who had all been born withing a couple years of each other, and of Fawn. Last year on my birthday I hiked to Reavis Ranch and I saw two fawns snuffling about for apples, in the grass underneath the abandoned apple trees. I stayed very still, and watched them, and thought this was a sign--that the two fawns symbolized Fawn & me, and that we would both one day graze in the same field. Fawn is everything I have always desired to be--beautiful, and poised, and so wonderfully elegant. So quintessentially female, and I have always felt lacking in that department. I used to envy her her beautiful clothes, but at the same time I appreciated the artistry & work she put into shaping her body, and garbing herself--I complimented her often, on her appearance, and those compliments were sincer--I truly did appreciate how exquisite she was--I loved looking at her. I feel that I gained at the Farm an appreciation for the beauty of women, in general--whenever I am in a public space I am scanning the women, looking for beauty, looking for a style or a face or a figure that pleases me. Sure, I scan men's faces & physiques, and I am pleased to find those that attract me, but what fascinates me, in the realm of people-watching, are the women. And I do not feel jealous, when I see one with a perfect figure, or lovely clothing--I feast my eyes, instead--I admire. I learned that at Zendik Farm--being among so many lovely women, and Fawn only the most accomplished at the art of being beautiful. My mother's comment, upon reading my first piece ever published in the Zendik magazine, was, "They dressed you up like a baby doll!" Meaning, the terrible "they" (I think it was Jana) had dared to put make-up on me. Mrs. Newman doesn't do that. And she believes that someone putting make-up on her daughter is tantamount to denying/ruining her natural beauty--this from a mother who never, no never, taught me how to dress. Who would have me wearing baggy clothing & a bowl-cut, if she had her way. I committed many an egregious fashion sin, as a young woman, and my mother never once called me on them--never helped me find a style that suited me, as opposed to her ideal of womanly modesty. Yes, she once said to me, maybe she's be a nun if she had it all to do it over again--and she would not at all mind if I dressed like one. I learned to apply make-up from Fawn. All us females gathered in the dance room one evening, at the farm in North Carolina, and put make-up on our eyes & faces, and she came around and helped us adjust our lines & colors. Then, on the way home from our next selling trip, we stopped at s drug store near Asheville & bought make-up for ourselves. And learned to wear it. I only did my eyes--lipstick every once in a while--and people loved my lined, mascara'd and shadowed eyes. I loved them too, but all that make-up was a pain in the ass when I cried....I've worn make-up once, since I left the farm--one evening in Tucson,when I had a water bottle of wine in my pocket, and was going to meet one of Gabe's & Celena's old friends--I ended up a little tipsy, a little flirty, at a house-warming party--but nothing came of that night. My make-up is now on its way here from California, along with all the other things I left in my brother's closet when I went off to see the world. I have always wanted to be beautiful--and until I moved to Zendik, believed that it was beyond me. I thought some women had it & some didn't & if you didn't the best you could hope for was to win a man with your mind. Well, Kel fell for me, and sometime in the past six years I fell for myself--I began looking in the mirror and appreciating what I saw. And knowing, that everyone's beautiful--in some, the beauty is hiding. Yes, I saw so many women transformed, myself included--when I arrived, everyone thought I was a lesbian--chopped hair, bulky clothing, the same pair of baggy brown overalls every day. Now it's abundantly clear that I'm female. I think, though, that some of my belief in my beauty came upon leaving Zendik Farm, and being told I was so by other men, who were not my family & friends--and came upon seeing my face remain open & lovely--at least some of the time--despite being long gone from the farm (I truly believed, when I left, that I would revert to the repressed lesbian look, withing months of departing--this mystical process was simply going to occur, and there was nothing I could do about it--what living at the farm had given me, leaving would take away). I used me art as a cover for myself, when I was in high school--I created beautiful environments--beautiful drawings & coverings--beautiful writings--to push out in front of me, to offer in place of my un-beautiful face. And yet--I recently discovered a picture of myself & my two freshman-year roommates, taken in a photo booth, that shows my grinning face, and there is a clear & beaming freshness in it, that didn't show often I suppose, but it did then, and so it must have been there all along. In my first-grade picture I am a vision of innocence--a little girl, alight with sweet happiness. Not fat, not ugly, not worried--just grinning & beautiful. All was right with the world, then-- (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
_1:35 pm_[emeraldimajia]	"What kind of Zendik would be one I could joyfully live in?"I am going to think out loud about that. Well, I think there wouldn't be quite so much selling--I would go selling to scenes I liked, and avoid the crazy-madhouse-concert scene. I would go exploring, trying out new places--I don't know how I'd ever get over that arriving-on-the-first-night dreadful feeling--but this is an imaginative, not a problem-solving, exercise. I would travel the world, speaking of Zendik-- I would leave freely, to see friends and family. There would be no stigma to leaving. There would be no hierarchy. There would be a real, visceral, practical truth to the understanding that each person is equally worthy, makes an equal contribution from their genius, even if that genius is not leadership. There would be a critical back & forth between everybody & Arol & those close to her--feedback would go both ways. And feedback would be given with love, and with room for response--true curiosity about the person, about why the thing happened, about what they really want, what's thwarted in them that's pushing & shoving to come out. It would be easy to get things--if I needed a new pair of shoes, I could just say, I'm going to get a new pair of shoes, and people would trust that that was necessary. I would live in a small room with a few people--a little nook, more private than a corner. I would have a cozy space, suffused with many textures and colors. I would have a desk and a computer, where I could write any time, undisturbed. I would write the story of my Life--I would always be writing the story of my Life. And I would have a blog, so people could read it--people everywhere. Sure, there'd be some things I wouldn't want the world to know--but I would censor on the basis of my own threshold of revelation, not my fears of what my fellow Zendiks would say if I revealed that. I, I, I--but we're talking about Zendik. We're talking about the culture and the place. What would that be like? Right now I just sound like I want to set up a little hidey-hole where I have all the things I require. But I guess that's a big part of it--I do want all the things I want. Since other people can have them.... I want abundance, is what I want. I know money doesn't grow on trees, I know we worked hard as hell to make our money from selling--but it's unlimited, isn't it? When I hoard money, for fear I won't have any--I don't have any. When I spend it on things I know are true & good--I get more. So. Abundance. A Zendik of abundance. Where I am cared for--and care for mySelf--as someone who is precious. Who is not just one of many workers--or a pain in the ass to be gotten off one's back--but a precious part & parcel of a family, a precious piece of god.... But I want to have my own Life. I want to be free to go where I want, when I want. And that desire seems fundamentally incompatible with Zendik. Maybe not if I have kids though--maybe the desire for kids changes everything? Or just the sudden, abrupt fact of them.... Because how _would_ I raise my kids? I always just assumed I'd raise them at Zendik. And do it like they do it. But if I didn't live there-- I don't want my kids to go to school--at least not any school I've ever been to. And I don't want to mortgage my destiny to put the little fuckers through college, either, when college is full of dipshits. I mean, it's not worth a damn--or is it? Is that just another perspective I adopted wholesale from Zendik? I don't regret going to college--I never thought of doing anything else. I have been known to say I'd do something else, given the opportunity of re-enactment--but is that even true? All I know is, it sure ain't ideal.... But that's the future, ay? I don't have kids yet. It will be a whole new Universe, by the time I do. And who knows--there may be unforeseen possibilities, for creatively raising a kid.... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 19th, 2005
_10:11 pm_[emeraldimajia]	Today I read an article in the Washington City Paper about Zendik--I am the star of scene 1--it's not pretty. The article is mostly very critical, and in some ways made me sick, in that way that Zendik-bashing always does. Plus the description of me & the living therapy session focused on me was quite tasteless. However: it did bring up a flood of feelings about Zendik and yes, mostly negative ones. I feel I have been defending Zendik against naysayers for so long, that I have been unwilling to take a look at what I really think of my experience there, particularly what I didn't like. And I thought, maybe I'll make a list of all the things I didn't like. Well, that doesn't seem so essential right now-- But I have another feeling, which is the feeling that my Life belongs to me. That I can do whatever I want with it, and for so long I thought I'd just sign it over to Zendik. Arol says in the article (is quoted as saying) that most of the men have needed to go in and out, whereas the women mostly only leave for shirt spurts, to see their families--well, maybe I am like the men, in that respect, and maybe I will have an in & out kind of Life. Because that's what I've been feeling most strongly, recently--that going back would mean cutting mySelf off, in some ways--for the first time today I thought that maybe living at th Farm was a chapter in my Life that's now over. That I learned great things there, which I bring with me, but maybe there are further possibilities for love & pleasure & that high I know from selling, that maybe are down a path of less resistance. I think of you, Sea, and your cranio-sacral therapy & your mystery school, and I know that you have found true things that turn you on. I know there are those true things for me, some of which I haven't tried yet. I want to take gymnastics classes. But that's the feeling, all of a sudden, of having a Life wide open--it's just beginning to dawn that my best possible Life might not be as a Zendik, despite all the goodness I got out of it. Maybe, like the onions when they fall over before harvest, I had absorbed as much as I needed to. I let mySelf admit tonight--out loud to my mother, whom I have long kept at bay as an Enemy of Zendik, not a true believer--that there were things that Arol & Fawn did & said that made me mad. And of course I only keep them with me because of no courage to say--and I feel like a little weasel, bringing them up now. And I would dearly love to listen to Arol's latest radio show, if I had the setup to do so. But I feel also this is part of my healing--to acknowledge that I was at fault, but not I only--I was not living in a perfect culture. Well, duh, you weren't living in a perfect culture--whoever said it was perfect? There's only the work, to make it better, which you either will or won't do. This brings to mind a quotation from Wulf that I remember: "In Ecolibrium, it is never te murderer who is on trial; it is always Ecolibrium." Which means that the society & the individual co-create tragedy. I wonder what kind of Zendik would be one that I could joyfully live in? Celena said on the phone the other day that she would love to be able to live at Zendik Farm with her husband and her baby--and I said, maybe so--maybe that'll happen. Maybe this work of breaking down hierarchy is not work that she & I are capable of doing. Maybe those who are there now can do it, and we will return one day with a sigh of relief, into this hope that others have made for us. As I write, I hear Arol in the back of my mind, saying, "Get a Life!" As in, what are you doing dissecting Zendik? Why don't you just move on, if it's not for you? But Zendik has so long stood at the center of my universe--and only slowly has begun to move a few inches. And there is unfinished business. And I need to know what I think, so I can free mySelf completely to do other things. Sometimes I think I'd need to leave the country, to feel a real Life without Zendik--I'd have to go far far away, to a place where no one knows it. And then it could come & kick me in the head, if it wanted to, and I'd know it was time to return. I don't want to have kids anywhere else, I've always said--don't want to send my kids to school, and take care of them alone by mySelf. Of course, it's possible to have friends--sometimes I find mySelf wanting a husband, fathoming the possibility of that, a companion for Life, and that has been a foreign language to me, for so long--I wanted that with Kel, but the expectation suffocated me. I've only just now begun thinking of him with any kindness--wondering if there is a future for us, now that we once again inhabit the same universe--I am bugged constantly by wanting to be friends with my old friends--Brandon is who I've been thinking of recently--we talked a lot last winter & spring, before he moved back, and now I cannot bring mySelf to email him, knowing people will be looking, and not knowing if he's even there anymore, since his picture never went up on the web--I want to be able to know the people I know, as individuals, not as a group, a legion of Zendiks. And if I ever live there again I want to keep my friendships--I want to love people, collaborate with people who don't live there. I want to have a wide Life-- It's funny, because in some ways Life at Zendik was the broadest in the world--that's where I first let my imagination soar, and there was correspondence coming in from all corners-- But I never felt I had much agency in the world--like I could go places & meet people, except on Zendik business, and I just wanted to have a regular Life, in the sense of being able to feel there's not this strict dividing line between us & them. I think Arol achieves that--she has friends, and people she knows, and she doesn't dump them. She writes an organic gardening column for the Marlinton newspaper. Zendik is simply her home, and it doesn't mean giving up anything. I wonder if I will ever be able to live there without giving up anything? Because in a benevolent universe you ought to be able to have everything. I mean, not have everything in the sense of being spoiled, but this thing that's truly good shouldn't have to be sacrificed for that thing that's truly good--they should all be able to rise & converge. Maybe there's some way to be a Zendik that's just my way--maybe I'm a new invention, a new kind of Zendik. I miss particular people sometimes--I miss Coz, and Siah, and Kaila, and I used to miss Caroline. I've shut mySelf off from missing individual people, since I feel in no way can I call and have a personal conversation with any one of them. Did you feel that when you left? Did you feel there was any one person you wanted to talk to? See, it's all about the mission--that's what echoes in my head. Of course there's no sense in having a personal conversation with me, because that's not part of the mission--how does that advance Zendik? But maybe it does--maybe it does. Maybe simple human connection is the only thing that ever advances any mission. This has been long & disjointed--I'm just thinking in writing--and still cringing at being a whiner, or one of those (anathema) bitter ex-Zendiks. I've always hated the people who pounce with a vengeance, claiming Zendik ruined their lives--Zendik gave me my Life. There are so many things I can do now, that I could not have done had I not learned what I learned there. But then, I brought mySelf there--I was by no means a passive part of the equation--I chose that knowledge, I sought it out, I worked to work it into me. I can only hope that the future will be something I cannot now possibly fathom--something so strange & wonderful & without boundaries that it has not yet begun to exist in my imagination. There must be some way for me to live in this world, and be a Zendik, and be a travelling, endlessly curious citizend of this world, and love all the people I love, all at once, and be a great writer in the cause of truth. All those things at once must be possible, because I put them into words in the same sentence. And I find mySelf realizing, it is never Zendik philosophy I have a problem with--it is only Zendik practice. I pull up Zendik principles a thousand times a day, to guide my way--Well, that is it for now--I will leave you with my musings--I am interested to see what you will say. Perhaps some coherence will rise from this mess, with the two brains chattering--I just realized even if I move to another country I will never get away from Zendik because I engraved it in my skin. And Apache left his mark on my leg. And they all left their marks on my heart. Dammit, I think about Zendik at least a thousand times a day. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 11th, 2005
_7:12 am_[human_whisperer]	my lj good to talk. I was trembling talking about some of the experiences which I think is excellent. (Comment on this)