Awakening into sunlight, I knew I’d slept through my alarm again. My phone alarm is so soothing it only wakes me sometimes. I slept like the dead. So much of my time lately is spent between the big stuff, which makes me happy, and the little stuff that piles up unless I take the time to garden it. Paying bills is like pulling weeds, I suppose.

Some people are much more literal than I am. They just drift around regular reality a lot of the time chewing on actual numbers and events. I can only just focus on these for a few key hours a day. I do love doing so and it is like working the soil. But before long I must drift—into songwriting, or reading, or daydreaming. I’m grateful. I wouldn’t trade my creative right brain now for anything. It’s funny how, in the end, we at last turn toward our strengths.

I thought that for years I was losing my mind. I had to take my mind down a notch. It thought it was in command. Then, more recently, I’ve wondered how I’d re-integrate my very fine mind.

The key, I’ve learned, is to give it even less power. Doing the 21-day hope meditation from Deepak Chopra and Oprah woke me again and again into my true self. Our true selves are vast, and they surpass the brainy brain. We become the wholeness that’s at the center of all creation—whole body, heart, spirit, and mighty mind, all in a present moment awareness that was and has only been the only truth. The kingdom of heaven is at hand means it is right here, now, if only we can trust, breathe, and expand into it.

I ache with fatigue still. Today I asked my spirit and nature allies if I needed to be worried about my constant, incessant fatigue.

It’s an incredibly intense time to be human, they said. Not only are we living in a time of chaos, where the old systems are breaking down and the new have not yet come on line. But some of us are willing, ready and hope to manifest the new now to help in the transition. This includes a vast rewiring of our consciousness, our minds, our nervous systems to hold the new patterns. We’ve signed up. We’ve raised our hands, not knowing fully what it means and the giant transmogrification we’ve taken on.

So yeah, we’re tired. It’s okay. Another helpful hint I’ve discovered: To rest into things feels lovely, brilliant, possible. Just because I’m at work doesn’t need to mean straining. I’m learning this but it already feels luscious and replenishing.

Last night Rae and I wriggled and giggled through our own original songs such as “It’s just another experience” and “Bad girlfriend.” At one point, I laughed so hard I thought I’d blow snot bubbles.

I asked you to go on a date.
But then I forgot
I said we’d go to the prom
But then we did not

I’m just a bad girlfriend
 A bad girlfriend
I take my leave..bye, bye
I like it when you cry.

A few days later, Rae and I both felt uncomfortable walking around with this song stuck in our heads. As believers in the power of intention, and mantras, both of us scratched our head to hear “I’m a bad girlfriend, I’m just a bad girlfriend…” coursing around in our minds. I’ve even said, “God, this is just art, it’s all in the spirit of healing. And by the way: This is not a mantra.”

Rae just wrote me she really doesn’t want to attract this energy into her life.

We are such good, earnest women, and friends. We’re like devout Christians wondering if we’ve sinned. But what use is any religion, or mantra, if you cannot hold the whole of teeming life within it? If you must shave off your right arm, your humor, your wicked wit?

The problem, I believe, is when we try to control our art, we flatten it out like a hallmark card. No can do.

What’s helped me is to think of it like writing a play…with the song we’ve created a character. It’s not us, it’s a character. How boring would a play be without the bad guys?

I think of Rob Brezsny’s “Evil is boring.” So maybe a play could exist that would be wild good fun without bad guys.

But honestly, the good guys would have to grow, or it’d be dull. And how do we grow? We face the light and the darkness within ourselves and accept them both and hopefully, grow braver and truer in the light.

But the art is the whole—all of it—and humor is to play with the taboo, I think.

Last night I attended an incredible workshop by Dr. Glenda Russell about privilege. The one Mexican immigrant in our group said that in some ways it was better after Trump’s election, because what was hidden before is now out it the open.

And Dr. Russell said that the only way we heal our privilege and prejudice is by talking about them…and yet it’s been a subject that’s largely been taboo and off the table…until now. Now we have a chance to at long last chew on all of it, digest it, and transform it into new life.

“Trump is making America great again,” my friend Joanna of Joanna and the Agitators said, “Just not in the way he thought he would.”

Rae, how can we know what is healing or productive in art? I think we need to let go and trust it (and ourselves) and the process of uncovery.

The email chain we have on the song started with a different subject, but the title was: The exciting, the bad, and the ugly.

Hmmm….

God, we’re willing to will Thy will. Amen. Guide us in all we do.

I take a drink of the cup and wash it down and hope for the best. Holy hope in the soup. There are so many ingredients, too many people and objects and spices for us to control any of it.

And it was good. Yum and Amen.