Greetings from the Surface of the Sun…

It was 118 here yesterday. The tap water came out hot, all day. It didn’t matter how long you ran it, it was just hot. I don’t do well in heat. Actual temperature heat or the heat I cause with my fucked up solutions to problems I largely created. Heat, melts me. It irritates me. It saps me of energy that I need just to function daily.

118 feels like I am living on the surface of the sun. Or hell. Sometimes I am not sure which…

I also do not do well staying indoors. I need to be outside. I need to be in nature, daily. There is perspective available to me in the great outdoors that is not accessible to me from inside. It is like the roof blocks my connection to the Divine. And so I have to get out from under and into the great wide open in order to connect up.

When it is 118 that is almost impossible.

And it is disorienting…when your method for connection to Divinity is blocked by the heat of Hades. This week has felt like some sort of epic power struggle between good and evil and the overly dramatic temperature has made it feel like hell is winning.

I am also capable of seeing that perhaps this is summer’s last gasp. And the cool air and mild temperatures are on their way. And honestly, it hasn’t been a bad summer. The heat has been mild, until now.

What is coming up most for me is how not well I do uncomfortable. It doesn’t matter what it is: too hot, too cold, too windy, too wet, too dry, too painful, too happy, all of the extremes cause me to feel unsettled and somewhat unhinged.

This week has also caused me with the physical pain of my neck issue and the rising heat index to go inward because outward was just untenable. And inside me I found some things that were valuable to find. I found that sometimes I need a heat wave to force me to stay indoors and rest. I spent all of Thursday staring at my ceiling because it was the only comfortable position. And I will tell you that if it would have been 80 degrees outside there is absolutely no way that would have ever happened.

So this week I have been surrendered to the idea that I am always provided for…I just don’t always like the way I am provided for…again, still.

Regardless, I am provided for. I am given what I need and a great deal of what I want. And I also got in touch this week that what I want is often fucked up and ridiculous. And perhaps the greatest thing God has ever done for me is to not let me have someone or something I have quite desperately wanted.

I have felt the heat this week. Metaphorically and literally. The heat of my poor decisions, the heat of my brokenness, the heat of my crippling anxiety and fear and the pain of my injury and insistence that things should look differently than they do. And so feeling like I am living on the surface of the sun this week is quite apropos.

Heat can be warm and inviting. And it can also scorch your soul. Both maneuvers are capable of bringing clarity once the smoke clears. It is still hot as fuck outside, but inside, in the blessed air conditioning I am privileged to have, I have a reprieve from the metaphorical and literal heat.

And this week I have learned some new things. Like I should no longer do a headstand in yoga if I want to have functional use of my neck. Chiropractors are divinely sent to us. Being pulled off my usual routine and being forced to rest is not the worst thing that can happen to you. And sometimes when you are too hot the best thing to do is to move away from the flame. The heat still burns, but your comfortability is greatly improved.

I have also learned that hell is a place I create. With my thoughts, my feelings, my unmet needs, my unhealed traumas and persistent insistence that life stop for a minute while I attempt to catch up.

And like the old adage says, “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen…” Except, I would change it to “if you can’t stand the heat, then don’t live in Ojai…” I spend very little time in kitchens as a rule, but my life, this wonderful fucked up, beautiful life happens for me and to me every single day, in sweet, quaint, blazing fucking hot Ojai.

Again…

Still.