Joy, Pain and Woe in the Mourning...Seeks a Retreat

i celebrated my fiftieth birthday yesterday
entirely alone. at one point i burst into tears when a neighborhood acquaintance approached  to
greet me, he coming up mere two feet away before i saw him.

then i returned home, and awakened this morning by nausea that would not go away
until I upchucked nothing but bitter stomach acid and bile that felt as if it cut my teeth


seeking a country retreat, i wrote a friend to take up their offer for a stay
dr bratt said i was either pregnant, drinking, stressed or worried.
all i can confirm except the first.




this evening that friend eddie asks me:

"what is your greatest joy right now - forget the haters for a moment, what is your greatest joy?"

i have no joy Eddie. seriously.
i am not doing anything of joy. I dont have my own space to enjoy. i have no friends or loves. no activity that brings me joy. My life was largely leaving my house around 12 or 2 for food and staying out just to be out of here.., which I want to stop. I have exhausted that route

i literally have no joy... grateful is all that i still have a bedroom to sleep in, my body still works, that is it

"you are an educated woman/person, you are armed, is this an advantage in life, your life?

are you warrior or wimp?"

i am tired fighting eddie. been fighting for a long time, all my life and essentially ramped up at 1993. I am exhausted, my fires are burnt out..i have been exerting with absolutely nothing being put in...it is against all laws of nature.

and truth be told, had about two discussions this week on this matter...my being educated has become a great disservice and handicap. my life would be so much easier if i werent...

i used to be a warrior. the cost of me being a warrior is my depletion and current downfall

i see that so clearly it is uncanny

be and become self actualized and you remove yourself from every possible population

- alienated

"

that's perhaps a good place no?"

not if you havent your own means. I used to have that once, which is why this is so bitter. everything i did and did not do was to avoid being in the place I now occupy

 "you created what you feared?"

it appears that way

"create something else!"

that is the funny part. my mojo seems lost or disabled or jammed

"old programming?"

yup for sure that

"

"worn out programmes, reboot the hard drive"

it was wrong all along..just badmind made it work but it was not and could not be sustained

"of course not"

"so, you have no thing to lose now, is that not liberating in some way?"

it is it is. and i am in a great situation if this is going to be my condition: no responsibilities, debt or charges..

it is liberating/ here is the thing though...trinidad is a hard place, harder than most will admit and near impossible for someone of my age. ageism is big

and a serious obstacle.. to do anything, small job or big

" one way of looking at things"

its the subjectivity that is the obstacle...i need to depend on people. to give me a job, to hire me, give me a chance, not be an obstacle to bar me. with nothing and no money of my own i am very much subjected

PART TWO

"so what is wrong with you employing yourself and the goodness of your own hands, mobility, good health, and intellect, to create your own methodology of sustainability? If you can do that for a corporation, why not bring "home" that energy unto oneself, or is that too selfish, or, are you not worthy of such attention?"

i was just thinking before you showed up this moment and look like i was prepping my brain for what you ask...the post would have read: "if i tell you the amount of things I have tried and it failed to catch, leave ground, fly or be successful, you would be both shocked and laugh", but i thought it is not funny at all.

i have about nine pages here on fb. here are the things I have tried to do: Personal Chef, HomeSchooling, Academic Tutoring for Tertiary, Farming, a consultancy under my name mdhuggins co ltd my art as communications and marketing tool ArtPost Trinidad

need I go on?
i even tried being a courtesan. even that failed. I think i am being protected in that regard

my thinking myself so worthy it was has me with so many haters anad resenters. it is them who have stood in my way

i designed and planned a single sailor costume when i came home and my cultural cousin told me people dont do that...i learned later it was her thinking the audacity of me to wash my foot and come in and do what they who have lived here all their lives never did.

I designed a costume band for Ella Andall

I tried event management, did an excellent job with people being happy but i made no money. it was a waste and i had no support

it is how i saved that twelve acres
music in the bamboo event

i support and give 100 to others i have never enjoyed same from anybody and no one does things alone.

on top of that, what i learned here in trinidad is that doing business depends on the same model for employment. someone must say yes, give you an in, give you a break, make recommendations and referrals for your business to grow and get traction. it is not , 'why dont you just..."

this is also a place where new entrants are often barred/gatekeepers galore

i still have stock of my posters and cards unsold from ArtPost..that is since 2011

woo sah. What havent i tried
I have invested in myself till i have not a drop or dime more to invest. I am now in the hole. I own my godsister $8400.

the one debt i have

ok. it went

i think in trinidad too, because it is not a meritocratic place you have to build clientele before you go into business. not create a business and hope to sell it and it will fly

and then Eddie, I dont discount that what is happening to me is some spiritual turbine, that only time, season, purpose and planetary alignment will correct...I am now just looking for a safe place to ride it out to the end...

"you are telling me a lot of things which are "prescribed" about business, who you know, a break in, allowance, here and there - now, imagine, for a moment, that you now reach here, and somebody download all of this into your cerebral cortex before you arrived,

what would you do tomorrow? in spite of what you had heard?"

funny thing. i dont know how to answer that because all i just wrote to you was from my experiences. no one told me a thing. i just tried with my bold audacious confident self and kept on bashing into walls, people, obstacles. I heard 'who do i think i is" I heard, "i like mehself too much" "that i am overconfident"

So now that I have learned that this is the way it is, wisdom would have me do nothing else than to stop banging myself into a wall. I might lose a shoulder eventually...or owing to the infarction on the left side of my brain, i cant afford to keep falling off ladders. that is no metaphor. there really was a blood infarction on my brain from jan 2014.

i have never 'listened to people" i do what i think i can. trinidad just showed me is more badass than me is all

"the real challenge of Trinidad is in my opinion, not an external fight with contradictory forces, but an internal alignment with internal strengths - the stronger you are the more you are tested."

for me, it became very simple after much analysis over many years: it came down to a matter of maths!!! my own philosophies were my own internal contradictions, but eventually I came to a very plain appreciation of my own context - how much does it cost to sustain someone like me, and can that be achieved without selling my fucking soul? Could I translate my joy, my speciality, my originality, into activities, things to do, compassionately which celebrated, my way of doing things?"

eddie you dont get something that i told you hours ago. I am not the strength i was decades ago. I have been beaten up for a long time, battered on an ongoing basis i am tired. so to write about alignment to strength to someone who is tired and battle weary and who is writing that and you not reading it and getting it....is a big part of my problem over all/ across the board

and you are right. I am still real strong for the endless testing i am enduring. non ending

"must be strong still to generate this much reaction and affirmation - am pushing you gently"

smile. yes. I see that.
both things: the push and that i am really strong.. but i am also incredibly tired. - and hurt, battered, broken, embittered, angry.....and some more things I cant say...lonely

lost and unable

"let it all the fuck out, it is good to say that one is "tired" and hurt, and weary, just let it out - perhaps you should take up martial arts or some kind of body discipline and for a time center yourself in your "vital" physicalness"

you know i just want a place where i can lick my wounds in peace...and build back up myself to walk upright if not run again...

i want to do yoga with troy hadeed, eat organic if not raw vegetarian, fish and japanese
.
Make myself strong again from this past dispensation. get grounded. get more spiritually aligned to my spiritual destiny and just flow

see.!! look at that> I wrote what I did not reading your last paragraph and we write the same thing. that would be fantastic. yoga and martial arts. to get myself strong again. we are on the exact same vibration!

"was trying to get you around to an idea of your present physical, vital, grounded orientation, you are often very much in "the mind", as if floating sometimes with a thousand signals -"

that is it too. i need a space where i can admit and release the trauma...even if not audible to another human, but speak it into the earth or onto the wind at the sea

that is me Eddie. that is one of my errors, achilles heel, downfall...it is my sign my moon, my soul orientation. and I need to be grounded. me farming was to be about fixing that. me trying to be more physical and sexual was about me trying to address that...i wont write for a millionth time of failure

"
my old yoga teacher used to tell me, it is the work to balance, every day, just to balance the psyche, a bit of everything - every so often you need to get the fok away and those opportunities present themselves, accordingly and deservingly"

well that is where we started today isnt it. me trying to get the fok away!

i need and want to get away from everybody i know, everything i do ; everything that is currently and have been my life for the last year; and my surroundings. I need a transplant. this 

plant is dying here

"oftentimes, sometimes, I, deliberately, do nothing - my life is very full and always was - there is no running away for me - so every so often, actually quite regularly, I just do nothing, just when I am supposed to do everything, I take my holiday in the middle of the week, it has become a silent habit"

"after Carnival, you go stay in my house in Souci for some days, not the guest house 'cos change ha' to pass,"

ok. thanks!!

how much is the guest house if someone wanted to live there? long term? per month?

"well is some change well, cos de place kinda special if say so myself - will have to consult with the lady of biznis who is in charge of such bookings - however we were calculating possibility of artists residencies, as inclusive packages or self appointed/catered,"

"but u stay by me"

ok

"perhaps you might like to assist with some gardening when you are there"

per haps. i gotta get clean and cleansed before i put my hand in your garden...

"nah, garden welcomes contrite hearts"

i wanted to do some internal therapy. i broke a code this week..lying in a hammock...emulates a swaddled baby for adults and it is a place where internal therapy and self love can take place

"and the tears of the faithful "

i would like to be somewhere of no expectations or demands and more than that, the whole intention is to nurture and accommodate my wellness..a hospital for a patient so to speak

"many of my visitors have remarked that the place seems to heal raging spirits and one is overwhelmed gently by the mood of the place"

that sounds divine!!

you need to put that in your marketing booklet...

 thanks for the time and counseling

"no counseling, time no problem - yea, b'day times sometimes suck afterwards!!!"

"we must really meet and talk, have some knowledge of being "able" to pick oneself up from a state of languish"

"the mire, a dire place or, a primaeval soup which, duty bound, you must turn up the heat and bubble up - in Gita, it say, whence this lowly state, your enemies would think you a wimp, stand up and fight, no honour in lying down taking shit, in so many words!"

you know what my fight is? I keep coming up with ideas. I keep trying...

 

"you gotta learn control and edit that process = balance or ideas run like a team of wild horses"

 

me and wild horses