POEM: Man in a Dress

Can I cry for just a moment?
Crawl into an embrace for safe space?
Can I drop the lead and not be a light?
And have a hand brush my pretty face?

Can I not be the strong woman for a moment?
Can I find a man to admire for his strengths?
Like a queen who's lost for a king and a ruler
I sit in solitude power for great lengths.

A prince arrives seeking comfort
A prince calls on to me to grant him safe space
A prince calls me his leader and his light
None worthy to brush my pretty face

A prince requests that I teach him about ambition
Focus and drive, I serve as his lead
I am asked to be a servant from the throne
And not a single prince asks what are my needs

Impossible and cold I feel for being treated less
From men who deny living their very best
I am chided for an arrogance
Forced into a position of a man in a dress

How I long for someone to admire
For his ambition and for his strength
Who lives for building his kingdom and nothing less
His best for his one life
Worthy to caress my pretty face

In the presence of such passion and power
Able to address a king and not a prince
I'll feel free and not treated less
No longer to live as
A man in a dress

Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

Man in a Dress

I have been feeling really stretched... Dealing with the loss of several favorite students, my social circle gets smaller as my closest friends pack up and go back east, Bebo is nibbling at everything in the house and a lonliness and boredom for lack of someone to admire... The last one I have ambivalent thoughts about.

I'm tired but I press on for the final spark of energy and finally collapse into bed after an insane hour. I write in the late hours. I practice the piano in the morning and evening hours. I teach in the afternoon. I meet with friends in the between times and I actually welcome their hellos. I think I would just work and practice if I didn't have someone punctuating my time with their presence.

I can't seem to have the capacity to carry friends' drama... And so I find myself wanting to be alone even more. I push myself out into my community though I may not be in the mood. I find a bit of fun and relaxation after showing up... sometimes.

I find myself feeling less emotional, less in my feminine essence; less myself and less human. I am pressed to manage a challenging season within a circle of persons incapable of managing themselves. I don't need another girlfriend to talk and vent with. I have a ton of girlfriends.. a lot of them are guys too. Men who are at a loss at being men. I feel like I'm the man, the dominant and strong figure. And I think my distaste at having children stems from the sense that if I have a child with any of the men that pursue me, I feel that I'll have two children to raise. It's frustrating but it is what is so.

Who's the man?
I'm the man.... in a dress.

I'd "make a great mother" everyone says. I shudder because I wonder if it stems from the sense that their experience of me is a mother figure; a source of emotional security and strength. I generate myself each day, I am depended on to take care of business and I don't have space to relax in anyone's presence often and get centered and be a woman.... sexy, playful,
radiant. When can I be the emotional one or the one that someone is putting at ease?

It's not a literal conversation that I am missing. It's an energy.

Someone has this energy that I long for. When he tells me of his goals and dreams, I am moved by his vision and his goals. His focus, drive and ambition is sexy. He trains and prepares himself like an athelete without ceasing; mentally, emotionally, spiritually. He is deliberate and is a man with a plan. He is such a force of energy that I miss it acutely if I don't hear from him for several days. I feel girlish in his presence. He takes the lead in the conversations that makes me feel like I'm in the presence of power and I feel safe .... He speaks to me as an equal but I feel recognized as a woman. I wish I could enjoy his presence of energy more.

It's strange for me. I have such a strong personality that I feel that I intimidate men generally. And if I don't intimidate them it's because I'm there as someone to give them guidance and help them feel safe. This is a common theme that comes up in conversation with my girlfriends. The dynamics of relating are such that we find ourselves in the care-taking and safety creating position where men feel like emotional weak unmotivated skinbags; teenagers that are always talking about asserting their independence but have no real assertion of who they are.

Perhaps this is what happens in the world with divorce so prevalent. Little boys without a strong male figure grow up only knowing women to be their caretakers. I have girlfriends who's dates ask them to pick them up, guys who can't afford to pay for the date, guys who can barely take care of themselves but will go through great lengths to possess a woman who'll make them feel safe before being a source of strength.

Or maybe this is what happens when women become so independent, seeing the male role as irrelevent... or impossible to fill with a worthy choice. And so children are raised without that voice. Is it a class issue? Where is this world going? Is it a good thing?

I just know how I feel.... in charge by default, the caretaker, the decision maker, dominant, always at focus to make my world and their world safe.. without a real partner, always feeling like the mother and a growing distaste of wanting to become one. The world has enough children....a lot of them are over 20.

What does anyone out there think?


JNET

POEM: Piece My Mind

Piece my mind, will you?
Into fortune cookie thoughts
Read a million words
Admiration on dishes
Conversation naught

Piece my mind, will you?
Playing a game of connect the dots
Broad lines of assumptions
With bold strikes of assertions
Conversation naught

Piece my mind, will you?
With mythologies of childhood fear
Boogie men, phantoms
Misfiled with that you hold dear

Broken dreams?
Kicked off the team?
I was once Last one picked

Piece my mind, will you?
Since I'm already on stage
Tell me my lines
From a house that is dark
Stand stage right. No, left!
What direction?
Why is this so hard?

Piece my mind, will you?
Collage me a truth that suits your day
A million words
To match your million less
My every thought only
For naught
Your best?

Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

Another late night

I can't seem to fall asleep any time before 4am. I am caught in the endless conversation between me and myself. Why? What is going on?

Everything and nothing
Passion and self-pity
Amusement and listlessness
Creativity

What would a conversation be like between me, you, myself and yourself? Here I practice talking. Here I practice speaking into the future; my voice. Here I cut through the noise and clamor of my weaknesses.

And I practice listening.

I practice listening...

I practice listening...

i practice...

listening....

POEM: Listen To Me

Listen to me
As if you
Have
Confidence and hope
How will you then act if you
Are complete
And whole?

Listen to me
As a person with a dream
You do
What you say
And you say what you mean

Listen to me
From a place of strength
And power

Listen to me
Like you love your each hour

Listen to me from that space
You call peace
Birth a future from that place
And make your joy
Increase

Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

POEM: Ride Upon Your Thoughts

You delight
In my conversation
Pouring yourself
Over my words

You give me your admiration
Agreement
I feel acceptance
A new world

You enjoy reading my whimsy
You warmly challenge my stands
You are quiet in your amusement
We travel
Through intriguing lands

I wish to sail in your stories
And smile at the worlds you create

Your ideas,
Your art,
Your frustrations
Life framed in love and ambition great

What fills me most with aniticipation
Expanding beyond your attention caught
Is the joy I delight
In another day to
Ride upon your thoughts

Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday


To the one who hears me and knows that I am listening.

POEM: End of Reason

Everyday I can choose a variety of excuses
I have no money, no interest, no time
I end every conversation in a way to create
Safe spaces of I don't need this, I'm fine

I can produce endless reasons for making things right
And I can see that my tomorrows be filled with maybes and mights

But what will I have after years of somedays and no ways?
Will stacks of excuses and reasons
Build dreams day after day?

What can happen
What would be possible
Can we amuse for awhile
If we went to the end of reason
And lived unreasonable the next mile


Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

POEM: What's Your Line?

Someday, later on, NOW
When, why not, I DON'T KNOW, WOW

I'm confused, It's awesome, yes, no
Why? Why? It's not fair, Wait.
Let's go.

Shhh..
We need to talk.
Hush, shut up.

Share, That's mine, I have hope. I don't have time.
I'm content. Life sucks.
I just want to be comfortable. Life rocks.

You never listen! Promise me...
I am so sorry, It's your fault. I'm broke.
Are you sure? It's you. It's me.

Please, thank you!
I know, I know, I know,

Pardon, say again.

Someday, later on, NOW
When, why not, I DON'T KNOW, WOW


Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

December Has Begun?

November was intense. I am not sure where it was most challenging; to be Jeannette in my life or in my head.

I am like a beaten, tired soldier on the freedom path. Good friends moving back east and favorite students not able to continue their studies with me. And I get to deal with my little issues over rejection and abandonment over that... Funny how my fear theme finds spaces to play out.

The illusion of money got wrapped in relationship to my SELF and became a struggle. I have gained three new students and am slowly recovering from being stretched from a lifestyle where money wasn't a worry and I can pay for life and contingent occasions to not having enough for gas and food and I have to pay for life on plastic.

I got caught up in the drama which I created over my fears. And I had hit the rock wall and driven through it.

I was already on the train earlier this year.

I had been devastated by an earlier betrayal from a friend that I had loved and respected earlier in the year. Betrayal happens.

I have continued being creative and keeping on top of living by keeping in mind my possibility of who I am. Despite circumstances, I dream, I create, I play, I write.

I am not rejected nor unloved. I am not my bank account. I am not my teaching practice. I am not my business. I am not my fears.

I am the future of my mind.

It is a daily choice and some days are harder than others.

I can love those who betray me. Though they create pictures and stories to attempt to ostracize me; they end up isolating themselves. I feel sadness over their plight and I miss them as people and the possibility they could have been in my life. I am especially saddened by the fact that they never got how much I loved them....

Half a dozen of my closest friends have left my world of Los Angeles and it has been challenging to feel that I am in here alone. My car broke down last week and I had to sit still for a couple hours before I found someone within 20 miles available to take me home. All my single friends were either out of town or still at work at 8pm in the evening. And then I didn't want to call anyone too far away. A friend helped me but not after I felt self-pity over issues of rejection and abandonment sitting alone in a place that was a dive for a while.

I have continued playing the game of possibility with my crush. He moves me and I find myself out of my self.

Something about him brings me into all my fears and something about him inspires me to rise up to examine them and laugh.

I find myself laughing.

And so I invent myself... I create the clearing for the possibility of relating and he is the source.

He is busy with his exams and I think that's great. And so here I am to generate myself while he is spinning in his galaxy. Rodrigo's Guitar Concierto keeps me in orbit, Spanish, French, and learning Italian keeps me in orbit. And "Boo" keeps me enrolled as the most magical word.

He reads the books I mention and remembers all my friends and he cares about my relationships especially the broken ones and offers himself as a "bridge of possibility." He puts out such beautiful intention to pour himself into my world that I can only further think well of him.

So time passes and I don't hear from him. I can't make him a monster from my fears.

What power is there from making him wrong for his dreams and goals? I can only create the clearing for him to be in my world. I've created a game and he has choice to play.

I think the game of life is about

"Will you play with me????"

Everyone is asking that question of one another and hoping the answer is yes.

I've taken the game a bit further by asking the question and creating a space where he is inspired to play.

It's scary to live out and play the game... But here I am, December has begun. I love, I live, I express and I am inspired.

POEM: Awake, Dreamer!

How many times will you look at the blue sky
before you forget to notice it?

At what point will you say you are satisfied
with seeing enough full moons?

Does that tree that you walk by every day
still have the most stunning green?
Does its towering presence still humble you?

You have an imagination
that has built castles in your childhood...
What do you build now, Dreamer?

From a cry you now speak...
What have you to say, Friend?
You are someone with a story
and you are the hero in every one of them.

You are the blue sky and full moon!
you have forgotten to recognize
Your existence and presence to yourself
is like that tree you know and love

Awake, Dreamer! Speak, Friend!


Copyright ©2004 J. R. Hollyday

Thoughts?

This is the little rabbit hole from a world that shines of neutral, ecstatic color.

The mad chatter of conversation is all for enjoyment and to see that you've missed that the carpet needs to be mowed.

The tea is abundant and the china is unbreakable

And you stand in the garden of your life watching smiling cats contemplating the question echoing from the tree tops..

Who are you??? And your name is not the answer.

What do you say and what do you think?

....a long winded hello.....

....hello....

The Sky is Falling and Other Laughable Lunacies

Do we not all have our busy days, and get self-absorbed in personal galaxies?

We have a consistency in getting involved with our lives yet managing consistent hellos and share expressions of frustations as a break from the crazy races we love to run. And who we commit our frequent hellos and escapes to are a matter of choice to create into existence.

Perhaps to the certain degrees that we step out of our games and play in the co-creating of realities with others and through our heavy self-indulgences or play with relationship dynamics do we communicate intentions too profound or too premature to speak of. We are all babies here attempting at communication or maybe sages with a lack for the right words.

So I finally regained a little bit more of my sanity today. Everything had to go somewhere other then where I wished. I laugh because life is funny and life is also uncertain... Things can be very compromising and inconvenient. And if I take my head into that place where fear exists then thinking is exhausting and futile that I might as well sleep.

Isn't that an obvious stagnant path; fear?

So this is what I learned about action despite circumstance;

4:40 (20 minutes free to make copies of music and do a bank errand andri joins me.)

My car doesn't start and my AAA credits were just completely used up last month.

I ask andri to take me to make copies of music and I return on time to teach my private students.


I had a great time with my 3 last students for the day:

Natalie always impresses me with her diligence in practicing. She sight reads so well through all new materials. I enjoyed a Fugue she played. She is bringing it to life.

Dylan did well with Star Wars and worked hard; his rhythm was so much better this week and we taped the session... He plays with such conviction and small hands. I have grown up students who don't read his level yet. He was thrilled to begin working on a Cold Play piece.

And lastly, Lizzy, was excited to show me her class ring with the theatre masks and notes to represent the arts. She'll be playing her first informal recital this season with my other students. She practices "in secret" so her dad mentioned last week. I told him that she was doing well. We record her pieces and present a tape to them every year.

While teaching, I forgot about my car. When I finally finished my final lesson of the day, I lightly mentioned my car to someone that I hoped it would start. A stranger volunteered to come out and look at it. His name was Ricardes and he figured that my car needed a jump so he found another person to help out and got my car going.

My car came to life! I decided to drive it across the valley to my car's specialist and got into the carpool lane because I was afraid that if it stopped than my engine might too. Eddie who gives TLC to my bug was there. He came out after I finished writing my note for him and separating the key. And then my friend called to say she got a flat and won't be able to get me. So Eddie drove me to a nearby restaurant so that I may wait to find another friend to pick me up. He was heading in the opposite direction I needed to go.

I had several unsuccessful attempts at finding someone available to collect me. I enjoyed a dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant where everyone came to watch Monday night football. It was guys night out at most the tables. I was a bit self-conscious at first but had no time for I was reconnecting with friends too far away to be helpful when I finally found Dixon would make his way out to pick me up and take me home.

I will be borrowing Nicole's car tomorrow to teach and keep with my appointments and then picking her and Ana up from two different airports, (that will be interesting) I am hoping that my car has something relatively easy and inexpensive to sort out. Aside from micro fleeting moments of self-pity when I had difficulty finding someone to help me out, I haven't had time to get swept away by the car drama and make up some stories how it'll ruin my day tomorrow.

I have a party to throw. My roommate is returning after being away for a month and one of my best friends is returning to town after a week's vacation!

A Happy Thanksgiving with Myself

Another Thanksgiving Day. This year I am spending it with me. Today the three hour drive to San Diego will be six hours with frenzied people rushing to family get-togethers. Doing the drive alone normally isn't the problem but it's joining the crazy, frenetic energy that makes it uneasy driving.

Is it a turkey obsession that prompt the reckless drivers?

I've just finished saying a happy thanksgiving hello to mom. She's fine with me choosing to stay home and understands my not wanting to drive the turkey rush. She'll be spending the day with my brothers and doing house-hopping between their in-laws.

Since I will not be participating in the around-the-table-holding-hands-praying-thanking conversation, I thought I'll still say what I am thankful for to myself and the mysterious community out there that may come across my words.

I am thankful for the security I have. In my solitude and quietest moments as well as my noisiest moments with a whole gang of friends, I have God.

I may have my moments of wishing to have a boyfriend or a husband but that is out of selfish self-interest. I don't need a companion to validate my existence. It will be a joyful thing to find someone that I can celebrate the conversation of life with.

I am thankful that I like myself and enjoy being with myself and so I view all friends, company and suitors as a gift of who they are.

I am thankful that I am my greatest cheerleader and coach. I enjoy the love of my friends and I enjoy compliments and respect from the different communities of people that I am involved with. But the most important person in my life that cannot let me down is myself. I study and train. I send my cheerleader to cheerleading camp and my coach to seminars so that they are more effective in doing their best at taking care of me. I am my most dependable companion to church and class.

I am thankful that I love learning... and teaching. I embrace that which empowers me and then I pass it along to my friends, my private students. I also embrace that which attempts to steal power from me and I learn from it... and I share those lessons.

I am thankful to be learning a lot about love and commitment. I have learned tremendously by firstly being committed and loving to myself. At Landmark I learned the distinction of being on autopilot and living reactively from living from the point of the possibility that I want to be for my community and world; a life of choice and creation.

I have invented myself as the possibility of unstoppable love, courage, self-expression and transformation. This is my game with myself and my life. I have my moments where the cheerleader and coach are not in sight but most of the time I am winning the game. I have been amazed to see those close to me mirror my possibilities to me. Because I play this game; they play too.

I had the pleasure of spending time with cousins from faraway, laughing with my immediate family, welcoming new members and enjoying transparency and truth through their company and through their emails and phone calls.

I have no desire to take power but to create and give. I have no desire to chase love but to create a space for it to exist and be accepted and enjoyed.

This is a Happy Thanksgiving to myself and to the special people that come across my words.

Much love to all...


JNET

Power, Money, and Mom

I have just finished talking to mom.

Earlier this month I had attended a Money workshop with T. Harv Ecker and I was able to recall a memory from the past that had been part of my serious programming on my relationship to money.

I was listening to his CD when I realized that I needed to share my workshop experience with mom.

This is how my life was profoundly changed within the first day of my attendance. ....

9am: Everyone (meaning at least 2400 people) is sitting in their chairs when a questionaire and a list of money belief statements are passed out. It has statements like ..

"Money is the root of all evil."

"Having a lot of money will make me less spiritual or pure."

"Most rich people probably did something bad or dishonest to get their money."

"Getting rich is a matter of luck or fate." ETC ETC ETC

I disagreed with most of the statements... There were 72 all together.

The one statement that I agreed with and gave a 10 score was...

"Having lots of money is a big responsibility."

I had filled out a questionaire slightly earlier... The sentence began...

"MONEY is ....."

I had written in the blank... "A HUGE RESPONSIBILITY."

Later in the evening, I partner with my friend Ryan and we bring out the papers from the morning. I share my answers and speculate on my "responsibility statement".. Perhaps I'm afraid of growing up.. I wonder.

I shared my speculations with my mom today... I mention that her desk is usually quite intimidating and I tell her maybe I'm afraid to get to a a point where my desk will look like hers... and she seems to stress out over it. She says her desk makes sense to her; she just needs an office and she'll be better organized...

I continue to tell her what I later discovered the first evening of the workshop...

Later after dinner of my first day at the workshop, I partner with another friend, Kevin. We're asked to recall the first memory we can recall regarding money. That was an easy one for me. It had been branded into my memory. I had one main memory in my filing cabinet.

Funny, when I asked my mom what she thought my first memory with money was, she thought it was the rewards I would get for working on a piano piece or the first time I got paid for teaching my first piano lessons while in Junior High...

I expected the possibility that she wouldn't remember.

This was my memory....

My first memory with money was when I was five years old. My auntie drove me to sunday school while my mom was unable to... I thought maybe she was stuck home with my brothers and had to ask my aunt to help her.

I was given a dollar to gift her for driving me to church. My auntie refused the dollar and I came home with the dollar. My mom got upset and I decided that it wasn't a good idea that my aunt didn't accept the gift and I thought it unfair that she was upset at me.

The following week my auntie drove me to church again and I had another dollar to gift her with. She refused again... I put it on the dash, the ashtray, the cup holder. I remember not being happy with her not accepting the dollar and got frustrated.

I arrived home and went straight into my pajamas and just wanted to hide or sleep. My mom called me down after talking to my aunt. She was upset and asked me where the dollar was. I went upstairs to retrieve it and when I returned she took it and spanked me.. telling me she wasn't about to raise a little girl who steals.

It was the only time in my life that I was ever spanked by my mother.

We talked about that memory today. I told her how significant that memory was because I felt an injustice over that dollar.. I never voiced my part and when I was five I simply got scared and disappointed that my mom didn't talk with me first before the spanking.... and perhaps that was why I had a tenuous relationship with money especially from her and perhaps that added some color to why I thought money is a huge responsibility.

A five year old's decision dictated my life... handling everything on my own, without help, dreading asking for help... If I needed money, I never asked mom. I put myself through college. I struggle by myself. I bought my own car and piano.... never asking help... never celebrating the decisions...

We had a good cry. She couldn't remember ever spanking me. ..but when I asked her how old she was then. She realized how young she was and that she was taking care of three small children alone while my dad with out to sea and that it was the first time that she had to work and be away from us.

I told her that I came to that realization while at the workshop. I had connected to how overwhelming it must have been to be raising us and not having her husband with her. I told her it was okay for her to lose her head. What I created out of that experience was beyond her knowledge and memory. I was able to connect some major dots and was able to forgive the past and create a clear space for my future.

It was great to share this memory with my mom. It was sad that a moment's reaction could have such power. That I, as a five year old, had such power to create decisions and create a world from it.

I wanted also for my mom to consider her own memories. What can she connect for herself so that she can create freedom in making choices for her future... what things from her past did she need to let go.

It is great that I can have this kind of communication with my mom.

JNET


I highly recommend T. Harv Ecker's "Millionaire Mind Intensive"....

Feel free to email me with any questions...and check out his website:



http://www.millionairemind.com/

A New Month ... what to bring into existence....

Nicole left for Mexico for the month to do makeup on a movie. It's me and Bebo(her pet bunny) until December...

I'd like to write some things into existence...

My financial status changes dramatically. I am making the calls and making new friends and contacts. I am meeting incredibly fun and creative and ambitious people that want to work with me. They are creators and builders. We work together inspired and transformed beyond who we once were before we met one another. Together we are a powerhouse of creativity, encouragement, expression and manifestation.

I am writing and playing and learning and teaching. I am in training... and I meet more mentors to take me to the next levels of my life. It is fun and exciting to learn about creating the changes I want. And I learn very quickly. Life is joyful to be expressive through my art, my ideas, my relationships, my work.

I am committed. I am not distracted. I am not weighed down by drama of my own nor anyone's. I bring resolution to conflict and I speak powerfully to clear up confusion. The strength of my life is spoken through the testimony of the team that stands by my side.

It's a wonderful November. It's gorgeous and I adore my life even more and the blessings that keep coming.... keep coming... God keeps winking to make me smile to keep me playing the game and having fun.

And so I shall say in advance, thank you, God.

The future begins here

Five minutes ago, I learned what blogging is... Here I am.

Finding this website began with the tangent travels of my crazy mind hiked up on caffeine and mind spinning movies...

Nicole and I just finished watching "Eternal Sunshine" as the sky dumps buckets of rain upon Los Angeles.

It's been a gorgeous day considering that my car died in Glendale, was towed to Burbank to be resurrected...and I walked in the rain because I didn't know how to start my borrowed roommates car. Oh... and I got a parking ticket...and I forgot a string of other of important things that would just depress me to mention... so I won't.

Things that made me happy today despite the drama....

Nicole loaned me her car so I can teach my piano lessons.
I had fun watching and being in the rain.
I enjoy teaching... especially the 5 year olds I had today.
The tow truck guys and the mechanics were really cool.
I received fun emails from friends saying they enjoyed the party I threw last Sunday.
I sent an ecard to E.
I enjoyed "Eternal Sunshine."
I began a list of people I want to reconnect with who have mentored me and befriended me:

People so far to thank...
Cecil Lytle
Carla Kirkwood
Mark Atkins
Belden Daniels
Christopher Hollyday
Paul Smith

I am just excited to create a new world to bounce around in.. my blogworld.

jnetsworld