Alanis and Michigan: friends, companions, familiars... Always!

Today is the day I shall always keep in my heart for these two: Alanis and Michigan, who were with me through every difficult step, through every joyous achievement, through every change of heart...

Alanis turns 18 today, we lost Michigan back in April; but they´re joined in my heart, and they're still working their magic together, because that´s the role they were meant to play.

I had a good talk with Alanis today, and I'm sure I'll see her and her sister in my dreams tonight, because we still have to celebrate, like we do every year even through my distance.  Alanis is happy and well taken care of, my philosophical cat who'd rather be alone and let her thoughts roam free as she delights in the wind and the rain and watches the trees sway.  Michigan was the sociable one, and also the one that I'd be able to have a conversation with after reading aloud from a book I was enjoying or an assignment from class.  She'd also watch football games with my dad, and steal our food any chance she'd get.  Alanis crawls under my blankets (or my sister's) whenever she hears someone come into the house, and she tends to pull the water bowl towards her before drinking, instead of taking a further step to reach it herself... she'd make me jump in the night sometimes with that!

So, here's to them, my little ones, I think of them fondly and dearly wish to hold Alanis again when I visit my parents at some point during the Summer, but for now this connection of ours will have to suffice...  And this image of them to last forever through eternity, to give a smile to anyone who lays eyes on it, and hopefully bring to the onlookers as much healing as these darling sisters have done to me!

Glastonbury Tales, pt. 3

Here we are, week three of the Glastonbury-based blog serial; magic, light and romance surrounding my life in a way I never thought possible, and finally (at long, long last) knee deep in Pentacle!  It’s a particularly intense moment in my life, because I’ve happily come to understand at last where the blockage lies, so what comes next is dissecting important bits from its origins, healing those moments that have yet to be healed that relate to my life, and write away my friends!  When I moved to London over the summer, the plan had been to start working straight on Pentacle after I’d cleaned up the six chapters that I’d need from Wideawake to send to agents; but as luck would have it, I found that it was better to finish Wideawake and focus on Pentacle afterwards, although the process of understanding and rearranging my childhood world never really stopped, so by the time when I first visited this town at the end of the summer, it so happened that Glastonbury rekindled many aspects of the original story.

The actual storyline has suffered so many changes over the past ten-fifteen years that when I was telling Stephen about it the other night, he said that it in no way resembled the story that I’d told him about during the time we first got together.  I don’t feel bad about that, because it really feels like most changes have been for the better, except for a few details that I want to bring forth from the different stages of creation; however, because that obviously means giving up some of the things that I’ve gotten used to now, I haven’t really found a way to do it in which we are all happy… I mean, me and my characters!

Ah, my characters… we’ve come a long way, them and I.  I created them at a point when I needed friends and strength and a hope for love; I nursed them back to life every once in a while, whenever they’d undergone a change that I regretted forcing onto them; I’ve talked about them with people from different backgrounds, ages and literary tastes; and I’ve made it through dark and creepy passages with their help and healing properties.  Yes, my characters deserve happiness, indeed, just as much happiness as I’ve already got in reality!  The fact is, that because so many of them were there for me to bounce off whenever I experienced a disillusionment, then the emotional links and relations between them took a bit of a turn from what I had visualised 21 years ago, and I don’t necessarily feel that they deserve that sort of treatment.  I have come to understand, after so much remodelling, that both characters and story have become not something I created, but something that my surroundings and circumstances created for me, and that I went along with that because it was something I needed for my own benefit at each one of those stages.  Yet, an amazing thing that Glastonbury has brought me along with all the healing from the very first moment my feet touched the wet grass as we set up camp, is a clarity of mind that I didn’t have six, seven months ago.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it still took me a few weeks to admit it (and maybe having to move here in order for that clean energy to flow through my body as my legs pump up and down the streets, hills and stories this town has to tell), but now I’m ready to admit that I was unclear about what was going in my five-part saga because I’ve been afraid to take control of it.

There, I’ve said it and now I can’t take it back.  Wait a minute, I can erase this entry if I want to… but no, no more erasing and backing down.  No more hiding behind the uncertainty of my own ideas; no more groping in the dark for the light switch when I know full well that I’ve got the candle and matches in my pocket.  I have the tools, now I have to use them.  I have the consciousness of the whys and wheres and hows, so I will make the story be told, one way or another.

By the way, it’s been five months since that light was put inside my pocket (or is it inside my mind?), five months since I jumped off the precipice to land in my true love’s arms (there’s the blind Fool that we keep talking about, the one who now truly enjoys the flight), five months since I reached the peak of my healing so that those main baddies that I was fighting inside my brain are gone, five months since I was regenerated (in a form of speech?), five months since I discovered how mad my loneliness was making me, and that only because I found health as a possible romantic way of life…!  Five amazing things that happened to me five months ago, interconnected through my desires in life within the path that I’m following, and so I feel the five elements flow inside of me and give me the powers of sight, hearing and mobility that I needed in order to make my life my own…

Well, there’s the “take control” thing once again, isn’t it? Written in another form, but nevertheless there… the Universe has spoken: We have given you the tools, now use them to create what you’ve been intending all along!  I have undergone the five stages of Cassandra’s spiritual route, marking it little by little, creating alternatives in The Shadow Behind, Wideawake and even in most of my tales told from the rooftop, so that anything that needed an urgent outlet could flow correctly, and now I’m in that fantastic, scary-as-hell place where I can actually, for once and for all, take those tools that are being handed to me, take my gifts and rewards that I have succeeded in obtaining from life, and take control of that life I’m being rewarded with!

Now, this seems scariest of all, but I’ll wait no longer for my characters to tell me what they wish me to do with them, or who they are and where they’re going; I’m going to decide for them, and will take responsibility for the outcome of what I send them off into; I will trust in myself and my instinct that those who deserve rewards will get them, those who need to learn are successful in their trials, and those who need to be gone are gone…  And that is, for the first time in my life, me taking charge of the different aspects of myself that have run erratically as I tried to put them down on paper to make sense to me…

… and scary as it sounds to my own head, holy frick it was due time!

Hm, let me rephrase that so it sounds more mature and poetic…

… and scary as it may seem to someone who’s undergone the type of things I’ve had, where control has been lost so many times that I’ve lost count, I’m ready for whatever I have to do to take control of my life and my writing, because yes, it is due time!

There, seems more credible.  Now I can go ahead and be considered a serious person and writer.  I can go ahead and enjoy my weekend, as I very much hope that you all will do as well!

 Best wishes,

Sandra Tena ≈ Writer, dreamer, healer, lover

Glastonbury Tales, pt. 2

First of all, I’ve recently found out that there already exists a book titled Glastonbury Tales!  I’m unsure whether it is fiction or non-fiction, because I only saw it listed somewhere at the Library of Avalon, but the book itself is not there anymore; well, I might not have had the most original idea, then, but I sure wish to use the name for something besides this serial within the blog…

It feels so right to be here!  I’m nearly completely unpacked (I just have to get hooks so I can take my jewellery out of the TARDIS and hang it on the wall the way I like it!), the flat is almost set up, and every step of the way has truly made me feel like I’ve come home…  It took me a tad too long to get here, but it’s been so worthwhile to go through whatever I had to go through to make it over!

I finally understand my mum’s words when she’d say she understood me because she’d been through the same, and that she simply knew that there were better things ahead because she was able to see my path from an outsider’s angle and that she could tell that I’d be out of the murky waters sooner than I gave myself credit for.  I was different back then; I hated it when people said that things would be better in the future, that good things were going to happen to me and that I only had to be patient; I needed to move, to hurry up time and events so that I could experience that happiness now, but that usually made it worse, because I wasn’t ready to receive the blessing that I was reaching out for, and that would break me down instead of helping me!  However, I was productive and optimistic and somewhere in my late twenties I changed my motto into the wise If something good didn’t happen for me now, that’s because something better is waiting for me in the future; I’d often add Just because something isn’t happening now, it doesn’t mean it’ll never happen, and that’s how I navigated for a few years, re-booting my healing process in the way that many of you are already familiar with from reading previous entries.

That’s why, when all of the changes started happening for the better some years ago, I decided to go into full blissful optimistic Zen mode: Relax and Let it Flow…!  Not because I thought it was easy in any way, or because I was avoiding the hardships of reality (I still get stressed now and then, and I do see the truths of the world in many ways!), but because it feels healthy, motivational and effective!  And that’s why I went into full honesty mode in the blog, even though it’s made me quite vulnerable to the elements, yet what good is learning from heavy experiences if you cannot share it with other people who might need it as much as you did, or know somebody who do?  I know that everyone’s path is so different, that even close friends that have undergone a similar experience than I did might need a whole different set of tools and processes to get through it, but any little bit of shimmery hope that can come in anybody’s way through my being open about my path will be worth it to me if it helps out.  I’ve said it one too many times, I believe, but I say it again because I know I needed a remainder of it ten or fifteen years ago: I needed to know that someone cared, that someone was going to be there at the other end of the line, of the screen, of the world, even, understanding and ready to tell me it was going to be okay.

I did just say that I hated it when people told me it was going to be okay, didn’t I?  It wasn’t just my mum, it was so many of my friends and family, too many to name; but it was always the What-do-you-know-about-it? feeling that kept me from trusting their words in the first place, it was never them!  I needed someone who’d never known me, who’d never seen me, even, to reassure me, because that person was impartial, that person was going to tell me the truth not based on what they felt for me or what they’d thought I’d done wrong or was doing right: that person could answer me based on their own experience, or because they’d seen the path clear for others as well; it meant they knew facts rather than hopes for me.  That’s why I looked for different therapists, because as soon as one got to know me a bit better, I’d felt judged and needed to find another impartial measuring device; same with teachers or with family acquaintances who’d be in and out of our lives so briefly that they’d be able – or so I thought – to remain impartial to my situation.

The thing is, remember how I had my Christmas entry up for such a brief time that I had to make an apology to those of you who’d read during the brief hours it was up?  I was crying my heart out while I was writing that entry, and when I took it down I was crying just as much; I’d named it Christmas Blues, and it made me feel like I was going back on a promise I’d made a lifetime ago – both to my family and to the readers of this blog!  Well, I’m always thankful for all the blessings I’ve had throughout my life, and that’ll forever include my family’s support, which is why when I wrote about crying on Christmas, at a time when the family was undergoing a brief but difficult health situation, I felt like I was stabbing all of them in the back…  But that feeling only makes the point I was trying to make all the more poignant!

Listen, depression is like that, and not because I’m off my meds does it mean that I’ll be a ray of sunshine forever and ever all my life – in fact, the raindrops look so beautiful on the skylights this morning, that I’m siding with rain once again as a metaphor for joy and purity of heart  and soul, but that’s a whole different matter.  Back to the point, the worst thing about depression, for me, is that feeling of being completely unable to explain to people what is it exactly that’s making you cry, even if you can use a word of two to describe that reason…  For me, that word has always been Loneliness.  It’s always what I’ve been most fearful of, and it’s been a constant in my life, but trying to explain that to the family is very ugly business indeed!  How do you even begin to say it, if you’re in a houseful of cousins you can play with and aunts and uncles you can share wisdom and funny stories with?  I’ve ALWAYS said that every Christmas with the family has been a blessed time, and trust you me, admitting this next bit does not change that at all, particularly all the love and gratitude I feel for my kin; still, I’ve cried myself to sleep every Christmas and most New Year’s Eves since 1999 (until 2012, because 2013 was the year the Doctor saved me on Christmas in London – pun intended).  It’s been complicated businesses, because most of those years I’ve shared a room either with my sister or a cousin or my parents, so it gets a bit difficult to sniffle away while someone is in a bed close-by and you’re trying not to wake them up.  They have, sometimes, and they’ve asked me what’s wrong, to which I mostly reply that it’s nothing and tell them that it’s okay, that they should go back to sleep.  That’s not me being a martyr or anything, that’s me trying to be objective and practical.  Whether it’s worked or not, that’s another story.

Nevertheless, the most important thing I needed to convey then and even now, is that it was never them that made me cry, it was never Christmas or the festivities in themselves… it was me spending Christmas alone, it was the New Year coming around the corner when my whole Old Year had gone by without any great successes in any area – romantic, creative, job-wise.  How do you tell those people you love with all your heart and soul that it’s not them that’s making you suffer, that it’s not your cousins, or your aunts, or that row you had with your mum before getting in the car to drive seven or eight hours to spend Christmas with the family?  It’s not them, it’s you.  But how do you even say that, when you know that it’s not even love you lack?  To begin with that’s a full house of family we’ve been talking about, then there is all the privilege and shelter you’ve had in your life, with good education, good food, constant travelling and an infinite source or culture and knowledge within reach at all times; then there is those friends you have at the time, whether they last or not that’s another story (and whether they show up at your birthday or not that’s yet another story!); then you have your cats and your books and your dolls that perhaps you haven’t touched in years but you know that they’ll be there in case you need to re-enact your stories while you edit them again…  So you don’t have a boyfriend like everyone else does, big deal! So you haven’t been published or won any of the contests you’ve applied to, big deal!  Wait, so you did have a boyfriend once, but he broke up with you twice in a row on Christmas Eve through a text message because he was cheating on you with his ex, surely that’s no big deal either!  Wait a bit again, you’re exaggerating, cos you did have a boyfriend during Christmas once, before the other creep, remember?  The really depressive one that was so bad for you that tipped you over the edge as you were crossing into your twenties?  That one, poor soul, I hope he’s recovered as I have, cos there is no way I could wish anyone to stay in that unhealthy emotional state at all!  Bless him and let him succeed in his path…  The other one?  Yeah, sure, bless him too, but can I use my powers and ask Bridget to put a few more trials in his path…?  …Um, no…?  Oh, well, it was worth asking anyway…

So, there you go, I ended up opening up about Christmas Blues again… whatever happened to make the subject come out in this way, I have no idea, but one thing is for sure: if I can turn my life around and be able to see things in a new light, anybody can… and I am one of those people I used to hate a decade ago, those that go “Cheer up, everything will be all right”, but I don’t care!  In fact, I love being one of those people…  Whatever I needed to get rid of, so many old fears and aches, so that I can open my arms wide and receive everything I’m working so hard for, has been worth the turbulence – I’ve even used turbulence now as a way of shaking fears off!  I wrote about that for Clarity Found.

One more thing I can say for sure, or repeat, rather, is that being in a relationship where you don’t just feel happier than you’ve ever felt before, but also healthier and more motivated, can only mean good things have arrived.  So, if I cried this past Christmas because I missed the one man I’m proud to always call the love of my life, it wasn’t me falling back into depression, but me being angry at the Universe because I’d finally found someone who I’m that happy and healthy with and I was still thrown into solitude at Christmas… and don’t get me started on what St Valentine’s day used to mean to me!!  Basically, you could read this same entry placing Valentine’s everywhere it says Christmas, and, save the thing about sharing a room with family members, it’d just read the same!  I could have just written an entry on Valentine’s Day’s Blues and been done with it, but fortunately I’m with my man now, so I don’t want to blemish our healthy relationship by naming today’s entry that way, hehe…  And on a blessed Friday 13, nonetheless!  It was just a man-less Christmas that brought past dark emotions up during December; that’s the irony of my life for you, and I’ve accepted it so far, but it still breaks me a little once in a while.  It’s only a matter of accepting that even the happily ever after will have its moments of ups and downs… He told me the other day that we’re not living a happy ending, but instead we’re starting a happy begging; that’s the best way to start a life with someone.  One of this days I’ll talk about books or movies or worldly events again, I promise… for now I’m basking in the delicious boost Glastonbury proved in my healing, so I’ll keep sharing my enjoyment with the town, with Stephen, and with my path…

…and remember that If I bring in sorrows from the past it’ll be to release them and bring in words of wisdom for other travellers instead…

I leave you all with those happy thoughts, and hope you’ll have a delightful Valentine’s weekend ahead of you!

…Even those of you who’re without a Valentine, cost that special someone is somewhere in your path – and also, it can be nicely celebrated between friends, anyhow ;)

Joy, love and brightest blessings,

Sandra Tena ≈ Writer, dreamer, healer, lover

Glastonbury Tales, pt. 1

For a few weeks now, I’ve been thinking that it could be a good idea, albeit a very dangerous one, to name one of my short story collections from sometime in the future “Glastonbury Tales”. You can just imagine the kind of answer I’ve gotten from the people I’ve mentioned it to.  Yep, they range from “Aw, cute, but be careful with it”, to eyebrow rise and a bit of a scoff.  However, instead of a series of short stories told by whatever range of quirky characters I could come up with for this wondrous town, a series of true telling of my emotional odyssey to finally get here?  I mean, yes, a little bit here on the blog, as I’ve been doing for a year now and will carry on for as long as inspiration flows, but also, how about making that my autobiography? Or biopic, if Stephen wants in and we make into a partnership project?  How fun, we’re already planning it, actually…  It could be a biopic based on a double-biography…  Caution: mind working, beware of future possible tangents…

Anyhu, I’m here now, after years of never knowing where I was going or where I was coming from, I’m home.  Glastonbury is a place where there is as much kookiness as there is healing and spirituality, I know; I’m not saying it’s perfect, and it may yet give me a few downfalls, just like Merano, Vancouver and even London did back in the day, but that’s not what matters.  I’ve grown and evolved enough to know that all the shimmer and glitter in the world doesn’t take the darkness and gloominess away from a place or situation, because life brings dark-patches here and there whether we want them or not, and to run away from them is never the answer because they will follow you… I learned this way back when I was 18, returning crestfallen from Merano, where I’d thought I’d finally belong because Italy was surely full of artists who would at long last understand me, right?  Wrong!  It got so bad at a certain point, that I was offered to change city, moving to Milan with another family in the exchange program.  Yet Merano enticed me to stay with the promise of a first love, a first kiss, and a chuck-load of friends.  So I took my chance and stayed!  But my first love was unrequited, my first kiss consisted of the right place but the wrong person and the wrong feelings, and the chuck-load of friends vanished in time and space as our hands grew tired of writing and our minds could not remember more news to give in a life that carried on pretty much the same whenever we stood to look back at it – at least that’s what it was in my case!

I often wondered what’d been if I’d moved to Milan, but that question ceased to exist once I realised that my reasons would have been the same in moving from Merano to Milan than they’d been on the move from Durango to Merano: running away.  It didn’t matter anymore after a few years – six or seven, perhaps, too many for a heartbroken soul.  It didn’t hurt any longer after a bit more.  (Or does the hurt have to stop before it ceases to matter?) It didn’t even come back to my memory until a few weeks ago, when I was on the eve of the move again and I came across old files in folders forgotten and boxes of memories that do not make sense anymore...  Not that I see those Italian months as a tragedy left behind to be forgotten, not at all by any means!  I think that what makes it unsurpassably good, is all that I learned from it, however long or short it took me to understand those lessons and put them to action.  I mean, the learning comes from bits and pieces of the past, doesn’t it?  So mine comes from Durango, Monterrey, Chihuahua, Ann Arbor, and, as much as it pains me to say it, from Vicente Guerrero as well, and the three first are ongoing at that, but when it comes to that big Bam!-You-fell-and-you-have-to-get-up-on-your-own kind of moment, Merano is very much it for me…  Although, strangely enough, the rush of memory and re-realisations came from finding my old pictures of my Summer of acting school in Vancouver.  There the only thing that truly went askew was my unrealistic belief that I was going to be discovered by a big-time producer and be carried off into the spotlights and the flashes of fortune and fame (away, away from my classmates who thought me weird and confused)…  Of course, I also got carried away by believing once again that the friends I’d make would be there forever and give me that bit of a turnaround my social-life needed…  No can do, chickaree – wait, doesn’t rhyme…  Never mind, I was just making the point that as long as I’d want the place to save me, I would have to be thrown back to the ring.  Well, I did get an amazing thing from it, other than the funky learning of course, and that was my full-face shot right by Steve Zhan in Bandidas, a little after minute three goes by.  My hair is blonde in the film, btw, so you might have to look a couple of times if you were expecting the pitch-black that I’m known for today (my natural colour, btw, though that fact may surprise many).

As for England, well, I’m not counting Newcastle as a place that I ran away to, because that was a perfectly planned learning experience, quite literally – in every way!  And it was also perfectly timed by the Universe, because it made sure that every little bit of life that I chose while living there would bring me something positive, even if it was taking the wrong class, dating the wrong guys, or getting the wrong dissertation advisor…  All of those things, as negative as they may sound, were there to give a turn which would take me to a better place than the one I was thinking I was getting to, but there was also one more factor that made it become a more successful journey than its predecessors: this time around I was not running away from anything.  Sure, I was running towards a specific goal, and sometimes I ran for longer than needed because I kept thinking that my goal was on another route, hence my referring to myself a few months back as the Woman Who Ran (which I still get a kick out of, btw), but that was different… And that was exactly what made my experience in London take a different shape than I had originally expected, because I thought my goal was there, when indeed it was just going to be an important part of the trajectory, where I’d be making a lot of pits-stops for healing and nurturing, and from where I’d have to keep going back to Mexico a few times for the same reasons to that I could have enough power in body, mind and soul (the heart always had even more than enough) to get to my real destination: Glastonbury.  Who knew?  I certainly didn’t, but it was worth it taking everything step necessary to discover it, to hang around long enough so that I’d get the chance to find that new route towards my goals – I mean, I’ve been saying for a few months now that indeed my true home is in Stephen’s arms, so it could as well have been back to Newcastle if that part of the project had been successful, or back to London if he says he wants to go for it at the West End or any such theatre venues, or back to Mexico with him by my side if things get rickety here, but the real point of this whole telling (of this first part within the telling) is that when you stop a little bit just to listen and focus on the signs, you might be told exactly what you need to do or where you need to go to get closer to your goal…  I like that – I love that about London because it taught me the hard way that when in London I should always follow my intuition, and I love that about Durango because it never stops reminding me to check myself and see if I’m missing anything…

But you know what, I’m gonna leave it here this time, and carry on with part 2 next week, because I didn’t even start speaking about the plane and the horrible turbulence and how I shook lots of fears away like that, cos that story deserves its own time and lots of space and I will happily comply with it.  So I leave you with my best wishes of brightest blessings, and let my limbs and mind take a little rest after all the running I’ve done…

Sandra Tena ≈ Writer, healer, dreamer, lover