Who Am I ?

Who Am I?             Dec 8th, 2012

Good morning! It is a beautiful Saturday morning.  I hope you are enjoying a bit of sun light through these colder rainy days of this wintery season.

My mind is musing on the day planned with organizing tasks so I can more easily be away from my rented home for an undetermined amount of time during the reconstruction of my bathroom this month.   Yikes that is a tall order.

I would rather be painting some uplifting scene for someone; losing myself in creating something great for another – which is so much better than worrying about my future.  Painting for others would surely bring me joy as well and would keep me more sane and grounded in my purpose during the upheaval of this reconstruction time.  Will I design, paint or work for you any time soon?  I hope so.  Let me know.

The work here will displace me from my most favorite place: Home sweet home.  This displacing issue and all the complications, have kept me from staying on top of potential plans mural or massage work in the near future.  So I am writing to you now to check in about possible work projects with you.

Would you enjoy having me artistically enlightening your environment?  Or to come to your house to for massage treatments?  

Is your initial idea of upgrading that room in your house something you might consider having me do for you anytime soon?  It would be great if I knew that now.  Looking forward to up-coming work would help carry me through this time.

Challenges with my property owners about reconstruction work here, have left me a bit too preoccupied with my own life lately.  The timing and what they have assumed I could "live with" this past month has complicated my existence in my cozy abode.   These upsets have thrown me in deep contemplation about what is next in my life and how to proceed and how to keep overwhelming fear and sadness from consuming me while I determine if staying is an option, or if I need to move, and to where (with few resources).  (Hence, my sudden devotion to meditation and prayerful wishes that a force much greater than I to carry me through this.)  Will you be a part of that benevolent force?

In entering into facilitated mediation with my landlady and her husband a few weeks ago, (which I requested in order to restore the harmony between us, and so I had support and did not cry too much during the discussion) Initiated a meeting to negotiate the terms of the work and timing of work here – in order to be informed, make agreements with them, and make plans for myself accordingly.  Yet in the process, previously undisclosed information about a sudden huge rent increase and their possibly not allowing me to continue to share this place with a housemate arose which may force me to suddenly move.  Yep, a shock hit.  My attempting to remain standing strong and informed of reasonable options (to empower me), became a much bigger challenge, one that includes the need to cleanse far greater fears from clouding my view – a process that is definitely not over yet.

What occurs to me now, when I think about succumbing to possibly moving soon, is missing work and all the projects I could be doing while I have easy access to my artistic supplies, and the difficulty I will have relocating my supplies to a place I can afford to safely store them and also have access to them.  If I lose easy access to what I own to create, it can appear from here, who I am and what I do is collapsing into a 'never-never land' pit.  Will you help prevent me from slipping into that pit? Please?

Please forgive me for the terrible timing of my inquiry, I know it is the holidays and you and your family are busy.   Pardon as well, the depth with which I share what is happening to me, but I am attempting to prevent a silent slip into an undesired reality; scrambled homelessness.  I am hoping people will help by suggesting things I might not know of or see from here, to prevent a huge loss of balance.

Sigh. One consideration of a path forward is for me to stop fighting what is happening to me, and let go of everything I am, (or my ego is) trying so hard to retain without the means to do so well.  I am holding on to stuff; thousands of dollars worth of stored finished artwork I have yet to sell; tools, and business supplies for a three businesses, (Murals, Massage, Writing); and all the comfort items in my life that make life good: a safe cozy home and dry garage.  I have an office where I create on a spacious desk where I document work, write and dream, that doubles as a massage office and an open space with a carpet where I can stretch do yoga and relax to maintain my health.

I created the most suitable beautiful home I could imagine for myself with the hopes that a healthy environment would lead to a balanced healthy life, which would naturally lead to more and more open doors and jobs to support me.   Sadly in this economy, paying jobs only happens some of the time.  Apparently as coordinated and innovative as I have been, I am seemingly not coordinated enough to orchestrate all the tasks supporting myself and generating more business requires of me, and I have not found the perfect supportive others to fill in what I do not do well.  Might you be one?

I work hard and love to be of service to others when ever possible, because there is nothing more important nor valuable than being of service to others in the world.  Yet, somehow offering my careful skills and talents and healing hands has not been enough to place me and my talents in the world to make a consistently living – not making ends meet causes a lot of stress – which degrades my health and thus hinders me ability to offer my services.  I would love your help in manifesting a different cycle, one that supports me and my health and allows me to thrive.

I would love to help you reinvent a sanctuary in a room at your house; to turn it into something you love.  And I would love to do that before homelessness scrambles me. Please help me keep my wits about me and retain my supplies close at hand so I can create for you and others.

If you might be interested in a project with me, as the one who helps create for you, please let me know what you need from me to make that happen soon.  

If you are skillful in fundraising to buoy a talented artist, Please contact me!  I could really use your imaginative help.

May spirit bless you for your kind attention.  I hope all is well with you.  

Thank you for your time and consideration.  Please let me know how I can make your life better or if there is anything else I do to offer support to your well being.  We are all in this life together, and I love making other’s lives more enjoyable with what I have to offer.

Be well,

Erin Tajime Castelan

Life, Death & Time. (Losing Kirby)

To celebrate the first day of a month long vacation from his job as the Cheese Department Manager at the first WholeFoods Market in California, thirty-seven year old Kirby took his new shorter, faster windsurfing rig and went with a couple of buddies to windsurf in the San Francisco Bay from the 3rd Avenue input just north of the San Mateo Bridge.  Even when the wind was high and swells were exceptionally choppy, windsurfing the bay was Kirby’s favorite way to unwind after work for a few hours.  That day, he and his buddies were photographing each other and they had time to cross the bay toward Hayward many times.

That day, I wanted to borrow some camping equipment from Kirby, it was Friday, October 1st, 1993. I nearly took my camera to go watch him windsurf early that afternoon.  However I got delayed and instead stopped on the way, to visit a girlfriend with my eight year old daughter and stayed there a couple of hours.

Two days before, while I was on the phone with him arranging to borrow the equipment Kirby teased me, 

“Did you just call to tell me you love me?” 

The out of character bold manner with which he asked shocked me to pause and assess; it leveled my awareness to my heart and all the love I had for this precious man.  

“Yes” I said, “I did just call to tell you how much you mean to me and to let you know... just how much I love you.” I sighed, “I    love    you    very   much.”  A long pause followed.  And Kirby replied very purposely in such a way I really felt the meaning of his words, 

 “I love you too.” he said with obvious warmth.

Five years of bonding with Kirby, led up to an epiphany in that moment.  The ecstatic moment of truth zinged me.  I suddenly felt a solid, definite “Yes I will!” waiting to jump out of my chest as a response to when this beautiful Texas gentleman when he finally pops the invitational question for us to wed.  Though we did not live together, my daughter and I adored him; we were family for each other.  He had also nearly a year before given me a gorgeous ring without the awaited question, only a comment, 

“I want you to know I am serious.” he had said, when he gave me a lovely princess setting ring; a ring that took him fifteen years to purchase for a woman who no longer was in his life by the time he paid it off.

I wore that ring and waited.  I loved him deeply.  He showed up well as a step parent and my daughter and I deeply trusted and adored him.  I finally, clearly felt the pleasure of my desire to spend the rest of my life with him.  I pondered hopefully, silently asking the universe, “Will he ask?  Will we get married?”

The Friday he went windsurfing, while I visited my girlfriend that afternoon, I suddenly felt dizzy, too tired to do anything. I forgot about getting the camping gear, drove back home, skipped dinner and went to bed.  Both my daughter and I fell into a deep coma-like sleep early that evening and slept for many hours.  My daughter slept through the night to the morning.  However my sleep got rudely interrupted about 10:30 pm by persistent loud knocking on my front door, twelve feet from my bed.  I tried to sleep through it, but the sound would not quit.  I arose very groggy from my bed in the living room of our tiny one-bedroom apartment.  I stepped out of bed in my floor-length flannel nightgown and walked the few steps to the door, unbolted the chain lock to find Jamie and Karla at the door with long sad faces loaded with concern. Kirby’s best buddy let me know, in a weak, breathy voice,  

“Kirby passed away this afternoon, he drowned in the bay and we couldn’t revive him. I am so sorry.”  

My knees buckled at his first few words and I melted towards the ground just as Jamie’s tall heroic stature reached out to grab me, to lift me up, to rescue me and hold me up, to keep me alive in ways he could not do earlier that day for Kirby.

“No! No! No! No!” Repeated screams tore out of me as I attempted to escape this information.  Jamie’s hold on me firmly insisting I not drown.  

“No! Nooo! Nooo! Nooooooo!” I wailed as if I could vehemently chase Jamie’s words back through time, back into the throat of the man who said them, in hopes to make the reasons he said them disappear!  I wanted to make the man who knew more intimately exactly why Kirby was not with him or me that night, not know this anymore, to undo the truth.  I wanted to chase those words off this plane and into a looking glass world where no one ever dies.  Uncontrollable weeping exploded out of me as if I were possessed, awaiting an exorcism.  Karla stood near me with her hand sadly on my back, while howling wounded animal sounds, escaped my control. My daughter, asleep in her bedroom just on the other side of the wall opposite the front door strangely and luckily slept through these loud and troubling sounds.  

No part of me wanted to process this information of Kirby’s absence in my life, nor all it would mean in the coming weeks, months, or years. Something more devastating than getting divorced happened and my cells could not process the depth of this sadness, so they contained the grief and rebelled; they refused to cooperate with each other. Each cell contained a tiny piece of the pain and refused to put the whole puzzle together.  They had shifted just enough in orientation to become unknown and unfriendly to each other to disallow communication with neighboring cells.  My body no longer worked as a co-operative unit.  I got scrambled.

In the weeks and long troubling months of repeated weeping to come, nothing worked in my body or mind.  My coordination was off, I missed the glass when I poured milk, cups of hot tea hit the table with a loud clunk sooner than I expected.  I knocked over and spilled things I did not expect to encounter; my perceptions of the world did not match my surroundings and I repeatedly discovered that discrepancy in awkward contact with hard surfaces.  I could not sequence basic activities, habitual actions like using the toilet did not go well.  Even when I imagined each step of the way, I repeatedly sat down on a closed toilet lid, just after I flushed the handle, only knowing once I sat bare fanny on the lid, that I needed to refrain from relieving myself – something was not right.  Stress does a number on brain function.  Death of loved ones creates a lot of stress.

My speech and ability to process any information melted and slid away.  I could think of words, but not speak them in a timely manner, and when I did, words tumbles out, out of order or in place of the ones I really meant but sounded similar.  When I had to deal with numbers, money, my check book or receipts I stared at them without really seeing what was written there. When I could see the information, I couldn’t tell what it meant.  The slightest tasks were no longer automatic, they required full concentration and focussed effort.  I cried incessantly for about six to eight hours a day.  I do not recommend letting grief go that far before getting support on some level; exhaustion took its toll.

Even ten years after Kirby’s died, I might not have had the distance and awareness to reveal to you, “That is what grief can do to you; scramble your brain and perceptions”.  Now, I have nearly twenty years of experience with the rearranging impact of losing someone so dear.  It left my heart feeling like half a torn, dingy-grey, recycled towel – one used to mop the floor.

Loss wrung out my heart and left it hanging on the edge of a utility sink.   My rag of a heart dripped murky water down the drain while it waited to be washed.  I had no clue how to revive my vitality.  Nothing meant anything to me.  Life was flat, there was no relief to this terrain; colors were dull, flavors were bland, nothing amused or tickled my fancy; sexuality evaporated... and I could not access my creative inclinations.  

When loss hits hard, the only saving grace is joy.  After a long period of suffering, I scratched my way out of the pain-snake-pit with such fierce desperation to see, know and feel something better, that scary deities feared me and got out of my way.  

My determination to breathe in new life led me to healers, in particular a third-generation Japanese acupuncturist, Hideshiro Minami, whose first two hour treatment on me four months after Kirby died, oddly, instantly helped me discern people’s faces from dull linear surfaces of streets and sidewalks and cement buildings that had no meaning.  He also helped me sleep through the night and to not hurt everywhere.  That treatment allowed feelings and sensations other than pain about loss to flow through my nervous system.  I began to write more, and to paint, to move and dance.

It is said that, “Time heals”, yet nothing about that statement makes sense nor did it help me have faith that I would in time get over the worst of this loss and learn and grow into being someone whose identity was not just shaped by a death.  A good friend who survived loss just six months prior, offered a more helpful comment.  She assured me, 

“Grief might kick your ass, and make you feel really awful – but it will not kill you; you will not die from it”.

I learned to live with loss... and have since suffered further losses over and over, and learn to live with each new loss a little better when I let go of the fearful thoughts my mind tells me.  Eventually the urges to explore, to live, breathe, dance, move, play and feel, are much higher than the surges of pain and anger over what is no longer.  It is really not ‘time’ that helps us grieve less intensely.  We eventually fill our lives with newer, more persistently engaging events and people which makes the pain over what we miss is less prominent.  We must open our hearts to allow newness in.  We learn to live with loss, from relearning how to live.  Loss is part of life.  Death happens at the end.  Death happens to those who die.  Grief is the death-like reaction we have about death, about losing those we love.  Grief is part of life, it is what happens to the living.  To feel more alive than dead, I noticed what makes me feel alive and aimed towards doing more activities that bring me joy!

Perpetual Spring Mural

I finished a backyard mural during the month of December 2011 in freezing temperatures. while often working late into the night bundled up in polar fleece to stay warm. As challenging as it was to be out in the elements, it was also very invigorating!