check your sugarcoat at the door

Accept that you are but a blip of beautifully complex atoms and energy in a monstrously, unbelievably infinite world. Most of this ginormous world is cruel and unchanging.

 Got that?

 Now zero in on your existence and expand it. Stretch it from one edge of your community, to your neighbors’ kitchen, to the far corner cubicle, to your grandparents’ dining room, and every stranger you pass in the process, stretch it over them too. Stretch it until it risks tearing at the seams. This is your environment. This is your community. This is your home team. The living things and places around you are immediately affected by your blip of beautifully complex atoms and energy. Not the entirety of the cruel and unchanging world so much, but this space, for sure. And it can only get bigger, better and stronger since it is yours and you would want nothing less for your team, right?

Now you can send an intense, rippling wave of energy in any direction, at any given time, whether you mean to or not. You need to know this, because this is powerful, and as was demonstrated in 2000 and again in 2004, not everyone with power uses it well. Let this be a lesson to you to take your power and use it properly.

Do you want to be surrounded by positivism, happiness, and a general assuredness in this crazy, uncontrollable world? Or anger, negativity and constant burning resentment? You get to decide. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. You Are In Fucking Charge and you have to take responsibility for your environment, for your team, to remain in charge.

Bred and raised in beautiful southern California, I know that hundreds of thousands of people begin their mornings in traffic, myself included. Traffic is shitty. Traffic is a direct effect of too many people in too small of a space (like Orange County), where it is hard to breathe and oppressive but we have this in common: we’re all trying to get to a destination. Likely, we’re trying to get to work, and it’s also likely that we need to be there at a certain time. Like in any game or sport, we have the same goal, so we should be on the same team. No use in competing with the kid who is also trying to score for the home team when you could join forces and kick ass with your now multiplied strength. No one person’s rush is more important than anyone else’s. This is a large, collective team of people doing their thing to collect their stuff, to continue living their life. Don’t play on the opposing team. Don’t be that guy. Let people merge. Acknowledge someone’s blinking indicator, tap your brake, and let them over, even if they have bumper stickers in direct opposition to your beliefs. (How hard pressed are we to judge someone’s sticker? Let them have their fucking stickers.) When someone lets you in, wave, flash a peace sign, let them know their tiny gesture is appreciated, is making your day that much easier, is a small but positive ripple in your direction and deserves a positive reaction. Let them know that you’re on that team too. Keep the ripple moving.

One morning as I eased my way onto the 405 north team, a younger guy in a fast little black car came roaring up behind me. I checked to ensure I was cruising at the proper speed limit if not a little above, at the appropriate time and noted that he was playing on the opposing team, not me. As he threw a fit and raised his angry arms wildly and cursed furiously in his car, I laughed my fool head off at his Angry Boy Show because it was a good one. And then I felt bad for him. Seriously, overwhelmingly sad for this kid. How bad had his morning (or his freakin’ life) been that the use of his brakes among the hundreds of other people on his team was causing him to make this kind of display? Certainly he hadn’t had a decent breakfast or he’d woken up too late and couldn’t rub one out in the shower. Maybe someone had played on the opposing team shortly before this and cut him off or flashed him the bird because they didn’t like his bumper sticker beliefs thus sending forth a negative ripple in his direction, and now he was ineffectively trying to pass that to me. If I’d had a bagel handy, I may have tossed it through his window to cheer him up.

Since I’m in control on my environment, he was not allowed to bother me and he was sure as shit not about to pass his crappy energy through me. I am not penetrated by anything that does not positively affect me or my community. I made sure to move to the left and out of his way. Taunting him would be accepting his negativity, toying with it, and amplifying it so he could use it against one of my other teammates.

Fuck that.

That is not the kind of thing I want amplified in my environment. A good reggae beat or amazing guitar solo, maybe, but not that shit.

One afternoon after work, my 55 south team and I were lining up to merge into traffic and onward to our destinations. One girl in a little gray car hadn’t merged in time, or was maybe lost and confused, or possibly just distracted by something shiny in the distance and needed to get in front of me to resume her quest. She was very late to the line and probably pleading silently for someone to play on her team and let her cut in this long line before she missed the opportunity. I tapped my brake, waved her in with a smile, and she graciously pushed forward into my line and flashed a beautiful smile and peace sign in her side mirror. I put out a tiny, positive ripple by simply touching my brakes and waiting a whole five to seven seconds and she reacted positively to it and in that moment we were friends and we were definitely on the same team. I like to think she passed on that ripple of good energy to our other teammates in some way.

Understandably in this massive, unforgiving place we all reside, there are many thousands of millions of things we cannot help or change. The weather. The construction on the street that makes you late to work. The unjust treatment of people/animals/plants worldwide throughout history. This is when we gear up and bust out that old friend of ours, Perspective. Perspective is a little bitch if you don’t reel her in and control her. She’s an untrained puppy pissing on your furniture and eating your underwear. She’s a hive of unforgiving wasps above your front door.

Until you bend her over and slap her a good one, effectively dubbing yourself the Master. Or whatever you’re into. As you learn to control Perspective, (simply, as stated by dictionary.com: a mental view or prospect) you effectively change the energy you put out. To make use of my puppy metaphor, I have a hyperactive, loveable little mutt named Lucy. She has gone through my entire underwear collection with unabashed fervor, shredding them to bits with sheer joy, more than once. And this used to really get under my skin. I mean to the point that my entire day’s mood rested on whether or not I could depend on a clean pair of in tact underwear. I could kick and scream all geedee day, but the fact remained that there was a problem here, something that was directly opposing my positive output by instigating a totally shitty mood, and it was my job to get the roadblock out of my fucking way. So Lucy and I became teammates. I made this OUR roadblock and we worked on ways in which to curb the issue. Instead of punishing her and actually being surprised every time it happened and flailing around like a fuming oaf, I made every possible effort to keep my laundry out of her reach. For a while, she found even the sneakiest of ways to get into my hamper, or pounced on my split second carelessness of dropping my dirty clothes on the floor during a shower (the nerve) and I tried my mightiest to use my friend Perspective when she did. As in, hey, a girl can never have too many cute pairs of booty shorts. Or eh, guess I’m catching a breeze this morning. As there was literally nothing I could do after the fact, when my favorite striped pair was in three pieces, may they rest in peace, I had to make light of this and take back my day. In my little blip of presence on this big-ass planet, I could certainly not let my mood, my outgoing ripple of energy, be dictated by the state of my undergarments or my mutt’s (strange) appetite. I had to recognize the absurdity that lies in this and puff out my chest and get bigger than this irritant and move forward with my day.

I have some serious trouble with my financial responsibility. I’m hardly a frivolous spender and the most expensive thing I own is a $15k car. But tracking my dollaz carefully is not my forte. It’s not my forte like orange juice is not toothpaste’s forte. It’s in direct opposition of what my fortes are. In the last month alone I have bounced two rent checks and had my power turned off. And I make pretty decent money. This is inexcusable. Seeing my bank account go into the red, or watching my bills and debt and APR creep north had the ability to crush me. I would literally loose my legs, hit the floor, and bawl like a goddamned newborn bawls at the injustice of all the light and noise in their new world. So I reigned in my friend Perspective. And I was like, “This fucking blows. I have to make light of it or it’ll take me all the way down.”

And I did.

I went beyond financial responsibility, which I clearly lack, and I decided I would really pay lots of magnified attention to where my money goes and how much of the shit I buy is needed. And I would make the most use of my broke ass time that I possibly could. So instead of going to bars, clubs, restaurants, concerts or anything else that would require money I did not have, and having a good time with my lady friends, I acknowledged the crucial difference between want and need from my couch, with a glass of two dollar wine. And I read like a motherfucking champ. And I watched movies that I did not have time to watch when I was busy spending money. And I reorganized and cleaned my home and walked around my neighborhood and finally burned through a few magazines that had collected dust on my desk and started experimenting with cooking. I was at the zenith of production high for quite a while. You bet your ass I would have had more fun grinding on girls at the club or deflecting cheap lines while drinking beer at the bar with my friends or laughing my ass off at the comedy shows I’d been frequenting. But my situation was this: broke. And I had to own that, control how it affected me, and make the most of it or it would positively consume me whole. And there’s way too much fun to be had for that.

A while back, I was sitting around with some ladies, talking and laughing, when one brought up something she’d seen in a bar. A scantily clad gal was dancing around in a not-sexy way, so I’m told, and bringing lots of attention to herself by bouncing about just so and putting the crowd on the edge of their seat as they waited for her tube top to fall down, which it eventually did. And this person said, “I hated that girl.” And I barely choked back whatever I was eating because I damn near sprayed it on her face. She hated her? This perfect stranger in a bar, who was feeling the music, and feeling sexy and liberated, and minding her own geedee business, affecting my friend not at all and yet she hated her? I’ve made these unjust proclamations before too. We all have. This is why we have stereotypes and why people sometimes spit in your food. Because we are all unfair at some point. I didn’t say anything at the time because I know this person well enough to know how completely she would tune me out when I explained how staggeringly ridiculous it is to express hate toward this dancing gal, even in the secluded company of your friends. This is a negative ripple and it has a very good chance of bringing out mean and meaner stories of similar degradation from the group of friends we were with. Instead of saying anything, I just removed myself from the place and left. What no one was taking the time to think or say was that this girl hurt no one in her attention nabbing gyrations, so where was the hate stemmed from? Jealousy? Not likely, but I wholeheartedly believe it was my friend’s lack of ability to show the world what makes her feel sexy in such a carefree way. Her energy toward this girl was simply repression of something she wasn’t acknowledging. It may not quite define her definition of sexy, and it may emit a vibe she would be uncomfortable emitting, but who is she, or me or you or anyone else, to deny a woman of feeling confident and acting sexy? This too is a team. One woman’s insecurities expressed in cattiness can infect her community through ripples of downbeat energies. And I’m left hung by a question mark on this one: WHY? Why would we want to do that?

Picture this. You do or don everything that makes you feel good. You hit the town with a forceful vengeance and shitload of positive vibing girlfriends. The women around you in your community all throw out compliments and instigate well meaning conversations. You exchange tips and ideas and you celebrate what it means to be the incredible, flowing, all-jiving, absolute pillar of exquisiteness that you are. You make a ton of new friends. You learn new things, gain insight, broaden your horizons, and fill up your calendar and phone book. You come home high as giraffe pussy on that collective camaraderie.

How fucking rad, right?

But most women aren’t like this. Most women are not involved in the kind of community where this type of evening is a likely event. I can’t speak for everyone else, but as far as female strangers go, I notice that a lot, certainly not all, but a lot, of them tend to be very concerned with how we view their looks and their boyfriends. They can turn most anything into a threat against them and their raging insecurity could go flying off the handle like spittle in a cat fight.

So here’s what you do: You partake in a serious pep rally for your team.

This means your outstretched hand, your shoulder, your ear, your mind and your brain open to your whole team at all times. Send out WAVES of positive energy in the forms of facial expressions, body language, conversation, commiseration and celebration. Be positive and give positive to your team. Thwart the negative, opposing team with the use of your super sharp enlightenment sword. Talk to strangers but don’t necessarily eat their candy. (Self-preservation is a whole ‘notha chapter.) I could just squeal and explode with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old and sugar to think about this kind of community. This is the place I want to be. This is the place I’m willing to work toward.

-Calamity Jill, wholly & completely inspired by Inga Muscio and the gal I saw driving in Santa Ana with the peace sign decals and the license plate frame that said, not a hippie, just a decent human being.