magic
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• Mushrooms On A Mountain

  

  It’s been a long time since I’ve done mushrooms. Partly because no one has been offering them to me, and partly because I’m a goddamn grown up… if you forget the fact that I’m currently growing out my armpit hairs with the sole goal to dye them blue. I could claim my motivation is a video I want to shoot, but I also think it’s crucial to my personal development that look like I’ve permanently got Gonzo in a headlock.

  It was my friend’s 40th birthday and she had a vision to hike the mountain on mushrooms. Now who am I to deny anyone of their dreams? That would be like someone telling me, “You know Toni, I don’t really have to taste my own feet for your sketch comedy skit do I?” Yeah, you goddamn right you do!

  That isn’t to say I wasn’t nervous. I was!! I didn’t know what mushies even felt like anymore. Plus I’ve been watching NOTHING but Twin Peaks for the past month so my brain is ligit scarred. I can’t see a log anymore and not think it’s talking to me about owls.

  But I was in great company, and that made me feel safe. Plus there was also plenty of weed, weed tincture, edible weed, and weed lube in case it became that kind of party.

  At the base of the mountain we each ate one, and then starting hiking.

  Now in the past if I were to eat mushies I’d probably mow down about ten of them and see what happened. But those were the days where I had fewer responsibilities, and could do stuff like that. It’s not like today where I have the very important task of making a realistic looking Donald Trump Sex doll hanging over my head.

  Yet I think if adulthood has taught me anything, its moderation. When I was young I would do drugs until I felt that feeling of, “whoops, I’ve done too much.” But now I know to pace myself, take it slow, and see how it plays out before taking any more. AREN’T YOU SO PROUD OF ME MOM?

  I have to say, this was an epic experience. When we got to the top of the mountain to our surprise no one else was there! It was such a gift to be the only humans at the top. You know how random people have a way of tainting a quasi-spiritual drug induced experience. Mostly because they can’t understand why you’re telling jokes to a pinecone.

  The wind was unbelievable at the summit. I was overwhelmed by the power of this invisible force; a breeze that I couldn’t touch, or hold, but that still cradled me with its intensity. The element of wind seems so ethereal because you can only see its consequences on the world, but not the wind itself. We stood at the highest peak with our arms outstretched, and leaned into it so much that we were at a 60-degree angle from the ground. It was so loud it was as if we were in a giant subwoofer, the base of the mountain penetrating our ears.

  I stood there for almost a half an hour, until my ears may or may not have started to bleed. I can’t be sure because that also could have been a Fairy’s menstrual flow she accidently left behind when whispering to me. Sometimes Fairy’s tampon leak too you know! We then watched the sunset as a cloud enveloped us. We were straight up inside of a goddamn cloud Carebears style!

  At that moment I felt sooo much love and appreciation for my friends. This overwhelming gratitude for their existence took over my mood. Yet at the same time, I also felt this intense sense of melancholy. The pain that comes with love, and the inevitable suffering that goes hand in hand with loving hurled this shadow I couldn’t escape. As much as my heart opened to the exaltation of love, it still couldn’t hide from the tragedy. So I did what any normal person would do. I hugged a rock until the darkness came.

  We then hiked down in haze. At one point we sat on the forest floor and turned off our headlamps to experience the blackness of the woods. It was so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, but you could see the giant’s hand over the moon of course. Because we had had our headlamps on, we hadn’t seen the fireflies that had been following us. Yet once we shut off our manmade halogens, we could see the hundreds of glowing bugs serenading us under the eerie canopy of the trees.

  The whole experience was like a vacation from myself. It was a holiday from the thought patterns of my mind. Rather than thinking about the usual things – the details of life and anxieties about the past/future – I instead meditated on the nature of reality. How reality is like an infinite layered cake, with infinite possibilities all stacked on top of each other. We shape our reality based on the decisions we make at any one moment. Our decisions shape the realties of others, and we are all tied together in this netting of the decisions we decide to act on. If you’re sitting in a field, one potential decision is to smell a flower, another is to dig everything up and build a Wal-Mart. We are the architects of reality because of the decisions we make, so we should really take more time to think before we act.

  Of course I can’t rely on magic mushrooms to bring magic into my life, but that doesn’t mean that making space for magic isn’t crucial. Maybe I don’t always have the luxury to carve out the time and space to allow my consciousness to wander into the wacky world of psychotropic substances, but that doesn’t mean the substance of my thoughts have to be so mundane. I don’t need drugs to open my mind, but I do need to make sure I don’t get shut in by the needless worries my mind creates. Mushies are just are a gentle reminder that reality is more complex then it seems when I’m purely focused on the minutia of everyday life. If I spent my days doing mushrooms on mountains I would look at my phone way less, but I also could just look at my phone less. The point of mind-expanding materials is not to do more materials, but instead use them as a guide to remember to make sure I expand my mind in the material world.

  

  June 22, 2017 • Adventures, Emotions, Musings • Views: 3413

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• Oh, That’s Just My Open Wound

  

  On the average day, I feel a LOT of feelings. I usually wake up with a deep dread, wishing I were still asleep because in that reality I don’t feel like a failure – oh and there was also that velvet couch I was eating covered in frosting. I then do a meditation and perhaps feel a moment of calm inspiration only to be punctuated by stress the second I open my eyes. I drive The Munch to school looking at her sweet face in the review mirror and feel like, “aww look at all that hope in her eyes that has yet to be crushed by the knowledge that Trump has raped her of a future.” This then transmutes into the drive back home where I start to wish the day were already over, only to sit at my computer with a mixture of creative energy and crippling self doubt… and its not even 9:30 am.

  By the time I’ve gone to bed at midnight I’ve gone through maybe 14 cycles of “life is okay,” and then “holy shit what is all this for besides facing the eternal misery of my futility playing the stings of my heart with the violin of delusions I call an existence.”

  Everyone goes through this right? (Insert nervous laughter)

  Yet if you were hanging out with me I don’t think you would say, “That Toni is one moody mother fucker,” because I keep most my emotional ebbs and flow buried deep inside, much like a dog with their bone. But instead of the fleshless carcass of an animal to chew on, I instead gnaw on the skeletons in my closet that I’ve come so accustomed to dressing up.

  That’s normal right? (Insert anxious hand wringing)

  The reason I try not to let myself get too carried away in my emotional self is because I know that feelings are ethereal wisps of wind that blow in and out of your consciousness like dandelion seeds. You can feel one way for one moment, and then the complete opposite the next. Although feelings are important and crucial aspects of the human experience, they are also somewhat absurd because of how unpredictable and illogical they are. As such, my internal world is much different then how I project myself to others. In the outside world, I come off as very unemotional. I don’t cry very often, I’m not quick to anger, I’m patient, I don’t overreact, and many think I’m easy to talk to. I keep a safe distance from my feelings because I don’t want to take them out on others. Of course all my close friends know my shadow side – I’m manic, compulsive, bossy, particular, controlling, excessive, and overwhelming… but because I mostly keep myself in check their overall impression is that, “Toni’s chill, and a good friend.”

  There is this dichotomy between how I feel and how I act because I ultimately want to be an emotionally mature human. It’s not that often that my feelings overtake my behavior, so when it happens, no one really knows what to do with me. I’m not really used to relying on others emotionally, so when the darkness comes, the black depths of my being is confusing to others. I’m not approachable when I’m upset, and therefor not that easy to comfort. Mostly I just want to be left alone to drown in my melancholy.

  I know we all have primal sores of our childhood, and there are plenty I have as well. Yet I feel like I’ve come to terms with most of them. Sure there are moments when I can access the sadness of my socialization, but I don’t feel ruled by it. I’ve tried to face my conditioning, forgive what hurt me, have empathy for the adults that disappointed me, and let go. I’m SURE there are aspects that still influence me greatly, but I don’t feel controlled by my past pains.

  Except for my open wound.

  When my best friend Bitty died, a piece of me died with her. Last Sunday, June 11th, was the 17th year anniversary of her death.

  17 years is a long time to have passed. They say time heals all wounds, but in truth time just means you get used to the pain. It doesn’t go away, but rather becomes a part of you. Like roots of a vine growing around your soul, the pain of loss entwines your spirit and tangles into your psyche.

  The tragedy of Bitty’s death affected everyone who loved her. It bonded us in a web of mourning. An entanglement that can’t be escaped because holding onto the pain is also holding onto her. I can think of Bitty and remember the happiness of our relationship and feel a certain sense of peace for her spirit, yet that doesn’t take away the core loss. There is a bottomless yearning that I feel because I can no longer look into her eyes, see her smile, or watch the way her lip curled when she was angry. I’m still her friend and our love is just as real as ever, but I miss her physical presence in my life and nothing can change that.

  I miss her.

  I miss her so much.

  The day of Bitty’s funeral, I couldn’t leave the graveyard. Everyone slowly made their way to the lunch, but I stayed. I stared at where her body was buried, still in total disbelief that this was really happening. I felt so helpless that I couldn’t turn back time and have stopped this from happening.

  I wept at her grave that day as the tears that over took me. The anguish was consuming. Possessed by regret that I had spent any time away from her. If I had only known all I had was 20 years with her, I never would have left her side. I would have sewn myself to her so as not miss even one moment. I would have given anything to see her again.

  There was this senselessness to her death that I couldn’t wrap my head around. Why? Why did this have to happen? The mystery of misfortune was plaguing me. There are so many disastrous things that happen every day, and those that live through them are just left with the question of why. Our brains want to solve puzzles, yet death is one that we can never decipher. Yet all I wanted was something to ground this horrible event.

  I made a promise to Bitty that day. I swore to her that I would live for the both of us, and that I would make my life meaningful to some how make her death make sense. I opened up myself to her, and invited her into my body. I didn’t want to lose her. I wanted her with me, and I needed her to know that I was still there for her, even if I couldn’t stop her from dying. I blasted open my being so she could find a home in me. I knew her soul had traveled on, but there was still the human energy of her, I could feel it. I embraced it.

  I’ve tried to maintain inspiration from Bitty’s death because that’s the only way I know how to honor her life. Because of Bitty, I believe in magic. She is the guiding energy of my life. Every moment of coincidence, synchronicity, positivity, I see as Bitty. I feel her talking to me, looking out for me, guiding me. I attribute all the beauty in my life to her, because she changed me. Growing up I was never artistic. Bitty was the artist. Everything she did was creative. She drew, she made clothes, she made jewelry – her room was an explosion of her unique aesthetic. Yet since Bitty’s death, the artist in me was born. I don’t see that as random, and I am so deeply appreciative of that.

  Bitty’s death destroyed me, but it also awoken me. It connected me to the spirit world, and everything mystical. Without Bitty’s death I wouldn’t be who I am to today, and I’m so grateful to her. She’s been such a good friend even if she’s no longer on this earth to share time with me.

  But I miss her.

  I’m starting to forget our memories. I don’t have her to go through them with me anymore. As I grow older, my brain gets filled with new memories, making the ones with her harder to hold onto. I would trade any memory I have had of the past 17 years without her for one more moment of our time together. My memories of her are everything because they’re all I have.

  This is my open wound. One that is not always so raw, but when it is, it’s like my skin has been peeled off and all that is left of me is vulnerable organs unable to defend themselves against the elements. There are times when I can talk about Bitty and I feel almost nothing, because I can’t let myself. Yet there are moments when just the thought of her makes my soul scream so loud it’s deafening. My head filled with echoes of my heart crying in despair.

  This Sunday was a hard one for me, and I couldn’t escape it.

  But it’s okay. It’s okay that I go through this, and I always go back to the one and only therapy session that I’ve had in life. It was about 2 years after Bitty died, and I was still crying daily. Waking up thinking about her, going to bed thinking about her. People were worried. I was consumed with grief. The therapist asked me one question, and it was all I needed to hear.

  “How do you think Bitty would feel about the way you’re reacting to her death.”

  I thought about it, and I know everyone was telling me, “she wouldn’t want me to suffer,” but they didn’t know Bitty.

  She would be happy I was this upset!! She was my best friend! If I just moved on easily or wasn’t tormented Bitty would be like, “What the fuck Toni!!!”

  That realization gave me permission to feel, and I keep that with me. The universal spirit of Bitty that is all one with the cosmos of course wants the best for me, but the human Bitty that I knew also thinks it’s totally reasonable I’m this broken up about her death. I loved her. Of course I care this much. That’s just what happens when you lose someone you love. You never let go, you never get over it, and you always miss them.

  

  June 14, 2017 • Emotions, Musings, Old School Stories, Relationships • Views: 3872

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• Is There Magic in Your Life?

  

  I remember times in my life where everything felt like magic. I would see signs all over the place and convince myself there was so much meaning to them – no matter how far fetched the connections “Oh look! That bird eating a Dorito means I should totally go on a trip with that dude I just met!” Coincidences would happen and I was convinced the cosmos was speaking directly to me, suggesting that my life’s quest was on the right track. I would howl to the wolf mother knowing that the universe’s intentions for me were not only deliberate, but that Gaia herself was orchestrating my existence.

  Now however… not so much.

  Maybe it’s because I’ve become older and jaded. Too many stories have happened where I believed that I was being directed towards a certain path, and I wasn’t. Everything would fall through in the last minute, and I would be left with my limp soul in my hand. I had believed so much that there was a guiding force guiding me towards something, but the outcome was never what I had expected it to be.

  I began to feel the universe was kind of cunty.

  Yet part of being in the magic of life, is being open to it.

  I don’t want to become cynical from disappointments. I’m trying to observe the world around me and fantasize how maybe reality is a construct. Perhaps I’m not only the narrator of my life, but also the architect? Maybe part of the problem is looking outside of myself for the magic, and forgetting that I am the magician.

  Quantum physics suggests that we project reality onto the world, and that the power of the observer dictates the outcome of how molecules behave. So many New Age guru types have become convinced that we can manifest our destiny through our thought patterns. I want to believe that, but I struggle because there is so much that I’ve tried really hard to “manifest through my breath” or whatever, but it just didn’t happen. Much like you don’t want to use deodorant made only of good intentions, it’s also hard to base your life philosophy of them.

  I have to believe that it’s possible, but if I am trying to convince myself to believe then isn’t already impossible?

  My plan is to really try and be aware of the world around me, and allow possibilities! But then I realized something so goddam depressing.

  IT IS REALLY HARD TO NOTICE THE MAGIC AROUND YOU WHEN WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKIG DOWN AT OUR PHONES!!!

  So often we stare at our phones to avoid boredom. Why wait in line at the grocery store and make eye contact with sexy strangers when you can just look at your Facebook feed?! If you feel uncomfortable in a social situation, or your friend leaves to go to the bathroom, instead of looking around and being open, we close ourselves off and look at our phones.

  Every time you look down at your phone you are not looking up to see the magic. You are not going to ever find signs on your screen. If we want to feel like we are living in a magical world we actually have to live in it.

  GET OFF YOUR DAMN PHONE TONI!

  

  May 26, 2016 • Musings • Views: 3146

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• Munch The Magician

  

  It turns out The Munch fancies herself a magician, and yesterday she put on a magic show for me. Here are some of her most famous tricks to date.

  1) The transforming quarters: This trick consisted of her placing two quarters in my hands. She then had me “close my eyes.” While my eyes were closed, she replaced the quarters with two sunflower seeds. MAGIC!
  2) The disappearing babysitter: This very tricky trick was executed by having me close my eyes, Munch taking her babysitter by the hand, and bringing then her into another room. When I opened my eyes again, her babysitter had disappeared. MAGIC!
  3) The transmuting book: With this trick I was told to look at a book and then… wait for it… wait for it… close my eyes. When I opened them again the book was gone, and in its place was a bloody pencil that Munch had colored with red crayon. FUCKING MAGIC!

  Later that night The Munch was asking me how I liked her magic show, and I suggested that maybe she try a few tricks that could be accomplished when my eyes were…. I don’t know… open!? That perhaps it would be more impressive if she could create an illusion that I could actually see. She took in this information, then looked at me with a stern expression: “But mom, when you close your eyes, that’s when the magic happens!”

  MAGIC!

  This is Munch’s Magic Show sign made by her and Spencer (the babysitter)

  

  August 12, 2015 • 5 years old, Mommyhood, Parenting, Playing, Talking and Not Talking, Toddler Thoughts • Views: 4081

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• Black Magic

  

  When you love someone their pain becomes yours.  Yet there is only so much you can do to help another person.  You can listen, give advice, and do your best to be a comforting support system, but you can’t make them change their lives.  It is pretty much impossible to force someone into living how you think they should and becoming their puppeteer.  Unless you don’t mind shoving your hand up their ass.

  In that way love can seem really out of control.  You can love someone so much, but your love alone can’t heal them.  Or can it?  Maybe that is the role of prayer?

  I have been practicing yoga for almost 16 years now, and over the past 2 have gotten into a style called Kundalini.  Originally, this yoga was only practiced from guru to student.  So in order to learn Kundalini, you had to devote your life to a guru.  But in the 70’s a practitioner came to the states and decided that Kudnalini should be taught to all people who were interested, and that we all have a guru inside of us.

  So Kundalini is some intense shit.  Recently, I was given a mantra/prayer to say for 40 days to cleanse the ties of negative Karma for those I love.  I have to chant it 11 times, and it ends up taking 31 minutes.  Now this mantra is not only long as fuck, but also as complicated as pussy.  It goes so fast, has so many syllables, and is in a totally foreign language.  Keeping up with it so insanely hard that it is impossible for my mind to stray for even one moment.  The second I think, “hey, what I am I going to wear tonight?” I missed like 2 lines.

  But I have to say, the mental challenge is really freeing.  If I am going to recite it even semi correctly, I have to be completely focused.  That level of concentration is like taking a vacation from my mind.  My thoughts can’t wander because I have to be so single-minded.

  And I got to say, this prayer is powerful and all and I am glad to be doing it… but it is fucking me up!!  I can’t sleep at night.  And when I do, my dreams make me feel like a psycho. They are so demented and I wake up feeling emotionally exhausted.  Most of the night I am in this state of being half awake, half spaced out, obsessing about mundane thoughts.  Like the idea “a doughnut is made of flour” will enter my mind, and I will literally think about that for 2 hours.  Over and over again…

  And then last night I even got sleep paralysis!  I woke up, but couldn’t move my body.  I couldn’t scream.  I was just stuck – awake but trapped in a body I couldn’t control.  It was the most terrifying thing ever!  Supposedly these are normal reactions and it will get better, but holy crap fuck shit balls.  Is this some black magic or what?

  I wonder if the guru inside me is one of those pervy ones that exploits its devotees?

  (Check out Munch ready to take off on her broom stick!)

  

  April 19, 2013 • 2 years old, Mommy Mind, Musings, Relationships • Views: 4090

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