From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.  http://blissanddrumming.com/2021/03/the-question-of-not-enough/ ‎
***
I settled into life without the scramble of the constant travel of my music career. In the new stillness, I recognized within me a welling up, a kind of panic of not doing enough, not getting enough done. Without shows on the horizon, some mornings I woke in a kind of confused spin. Then, I noticed that in this confusion was a feeling of futility. I will never get enough done, so I might as well not even start.

To witness this was a gift. Maybe there has always been this pushing, punishing dread of not doing enough, of not being enough. Maybe this has driven all my moments, and my impression of who I am. If I am not doing enough, then fundamentally, I am not enough. That’s a terrible feeling.

The Question Of Not Enough

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
Airports have lost their charm, at least for the time being. It seems as if everyone is discombobulated. Humans have forgotten their easy flow of being, and there is a kind of uptight scrabbling and agitation that sets everything on edge. People have been cooped up in their own spaces, getting their demands met in every moment, and I guess they’ve forgotten how to comport themselves with strangers. Not every impulse gets met immediately when you’re outside of your household, and people seem to have forgotten this as they bully their way to the counter or cut everyone off in traffic.

The Scrabble To Get There

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
We map out how we want it all to look, and we have a picture of the outcome. We create this picture based on the past, and it is through fear we speak. Fear of not having enough, fear of it not working out in the way we vision, fear of pain or sorrow, fear of change. I think I am supposed to know what the future is to look like. So I ask and ask and ask. 

In the past year I have been shifting to a different kind of prayer, a different type of conversation with the great unknown. I began working with a mantra meditation, and the words I focus on praise and thank. After doing this for several months, I suddenly found myself unreasonably happy. Something changed in my moments, and my moments have changed. I see that my prayers have been so one-directed. Now the energy is moving in another way.

About Time for Thanks

From the blog BlissandDrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.

Riding A Rollercoaster At 30 Rock

A post from the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine.

***
I have traveled and played music in every state but one (Alaska). I have slept on floors and been cared for by music fans. I have been invited into strangers’ homes and hung out with people from every walk of life, united by music. I do not believe that our divisions are stronger than our connections. I do not believe that one-on-one, I can not find common ground with nearly everyone I come into contact with. I believe that every single person I have met in my life deserves all of the advantages that I have been given. I do not believe that if I give others an advantage, it lessens mine. I believe to strengthen one person in a family strengthens the family. The person is afraid to speak the truth is lifted up by the other members, and finds her way to love and lets go of fear.

This is the gospel, this is the truth. We are One. I will continue working on letting go of the fear of speaking the truth. I will work to be as open as possible to make sure I say to everyone I meet, you are valued. You deserve everything that everyone else deserves. My seven-year-old nephew sees it. Why not me?

Lessons in Gospel

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine.

***
I love the quiet. I guess I’m in the minority, judging from how there are screens speaking to me pretty much as soon as I go outside: TVs in cabs and elevators and restaurants. I went into a beautiful restaurant over the holiday, and sat at a bar that was made of pale golden marble, lit magically from within. The back bar glowed blue between the bottles, and soft jazz played in the background. It was gorgeous, or I guess it was, when I could forget about the six plasma screens stretched above us, each of them playing something different. My brain doesn’t handle that well. I find myself absently staring at the moving images without recognizing what it is I’m watching, but forgetting where I am. Yes, I’m in the minority.

Anyway, I do love getting lost in an afternoon of story. Not only that, but I was connected with my best friend on and off all weekend, and we were trading recommendations of what we were reading, forwarding snippets to each other. It was exquisite.

Majority Of One

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine.

***
I am going to accept that you will believe what you want to believe and I’m going to say, you are right. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what is best for people, except that I know in my soul that compassion and empathy and love is what makes my whole body sing. It’s what makes my life beautiful and I love to believe that each person can find this beauty. It’s what makes me look at the sky and the clouds and the trees and the earth and think, this is all here for me and there is no me. We are all living light of God. This moment you see is the dream you are dreaming. Let go of the fear! Let go of the hate! Let go of the blind acceptance of people who speak only of separatism and hate and fear and realize, you can run, but you can’t hide. We are all here together, and we have all, in the future, or in the past or in some great cosmic understanding of no-time, come out the other side and found that it is all one vibration of love. I am a hippie and I am unknowing, but I can tell you that if I were to fall through this bank of clouds and through the red sunshine on the horizon my last thoughts would be of love. We are all together in this one karma. It’s you and me, together forever. I’ll love you forever. No matter what pain comes, this love will carry me through

Yet Another Plea Of Love

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine.

***
When I’m sitting in meditation and an emotion rises up out of nowhere, out of no thought or story, it’s as if a storm is passing through my body. Maybe first my stomach feels heavy, and I’ll watch as the heaviness starts to spread. I can usually name it: “Oh, here’s sorrow. Let me invite it in. Let me feel it fully.” It can shorten my breath to experience these things; tears come, and I fight to not fidget. I’ll watch the mind try to come up with stories, with reasons for pain. The only thing to do is keep falling into that still place, that quiet that lies beneath, and just observe. If I react, the emotions dig in. If I just observe, they rise up like storms that demand attention, that sway the trees and crash the jetties, and then leave behind the clear single note of an infinite bell.

One More, With Feeling

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine.

***
When I fall into the true self, that infinite stillness that I find in the center of my being, it is just that, infinite. I don’t have to be in meditation to experience it, sitting on my little bench, wrapped up the corner of my room with a singing bowl in front of me and my Buddhist monk pug noisily meditating beside me. All it takes to find that place is to remember to find it, all day long, driving in the car, walking down the street, sitting backstage, in the middle of a song, when I become a part of the song and no longer merely a player. It is as simple as remembering, and falling my awareness to the center of my heart.

Eternal Bliss Of Birthday Cake

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, read by Clementine. She also refers to www.awakeningthetrueself.com.

***

Who is the Clementine who gets sad and lonely? Just a fabrication, a ball of DNA and energy and an ever-changing mass of molecules that rearranges millisecond to millisecond. Somehow, I have woken in this plane of existence in which I believe this body is a solid thing when really it is 99% space and energy. Who is there to be lonely? Who is there to be sad? What is there but the energy of love that keeps it all together? How can pure, infinite awareness get lonely?

The Lonely Gong Bath And A Wrinkle In Time

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, this post http://blissanddrumming.com/2017/10/ten-ways-awesome-studio-musician/ ‎ is read by Clementine. 

***
As someone hired for the session, the primary thing that matters to me is that I get in and get out as quickly as possible. In most sessions with Rob, there is a feeling of celebration. The studio is hallowed place in which each person gets to bring a lifetime of work and all of their creative energy and let it shine for an afternoon, or a few days, or however long you are gifted with studio time. In this time, the culmination of your creative voice is laid down on something that stands to be heard by the world. So there is a tendency to want to milk it, to bathe in the connection with the other musicians, drink a beer when your part is over, hang out and see how the rest of the recording goes down.

That’s not your role, though.

Ten Ways To Be An Awesome Studio Musician

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this post: http://blissanddrumming.com/2017/11/rock-addled-brain-goes-repeat/. She also mentions www.awakeningthetrueself.com
***
Years ago, I spent some time meditating on on my inner critic, and an image of a woman in a gray suit and a tight bun on her head emerged. I have no idea where the image comes from, but it’s been helpful to put a face on her. When I asked her what she needed from me, she said she didn’t want me to fail. This is why she was so incessantly belligerent, and why she thought it would be a good idea to just not ever produce any work for which I would be so vulnerable.

After a while of sitting with her, we made a deal. I promised that I would work as hard as I could on anything I produced, and she said she would shut the hell up and let me work.

The Rock-Addled Brain Goes On Repeat

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece: 

***

Of course, as I experienced Cuba and this different way of seeing the world, I realized that everything I see, I see through my own history and DNA and  bias, and that nothing I see exists the way I think it does. I am a political moron, a humanity-lover and a cosmic idealist. It was interesting to see my egoic self, and then practice what Robert Adams speaks of.

I fall beneath this bias, this ego, this Clementine. I ask, to whom do these thoughts come? To whom does this experience come? What is solid here at all?

I am a collection of molecules on a plane flying over the Yucatan peninsula, a little drunk on wine and looking forward to being in bed with a dog who smells like my childhood stuffed animals. I have been heartbroken and am coming out of a period in which I questioned my sanity and my motives and my choices in this life and yet here in my heart I can sit in stillness for long empty moments and trust that truth I find there.

Viva La Revolucion

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece: http://blissanddrumming.com/2018/06/awakening-the-cosmic-joke/.

***
Music provides a great illustration of this. I am on stage, playing drums in front of an audience. My thoughts float through as I play the song: the stick in my hands, the flutter of worry about something tricky coming up, the way the other instruments are playing , the sound or lack of it coming through the monitor. I feel these things rise; I allow the twinge of worry, the irritation with the monitor, the doubt or focus. Rather than obsess or lose my place in the song, however, I fall into that open awareness, allow everything to rise and fall, while remaining fully present in the song. 

When I play this way, I connect with each moment, each melody, while I am still aware of my technical being, and the other ears in the room hearing the song, and where I am in it. I am fully then in the center of the moment, experiencing it all and letting the song play me. I can rest in that wider awareness while the small Clem is counting the fill and adjusting her stick and allowing emotions and thoughts to appear, and it is all of utmost importance and of no importance at the same time. Duality is something we learn to discard in this practice. It is all relevant and irrelevant, trivial and the most important song that has ever been played. The only song, for that matter.

Awakening: The Cosmic Joke

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
When I first arrived 18 years ago I saw pretty clearly that one day the little town would become a quaint art community in the middle of suburban sprawl, and that’s what is happening, as Omaha has annexed its Western edge and development is razing the 20 miles of cornfield that used to separate the city from country. I could predict the future because this has happened in my life before, in my childhood Orange County, as orange groves made way for sprawling housing developments. It’s a dim glory, being proven right this way.

It used to torment me, the way ‘progress’ happens. In my hometown, the gorgeous country road on which we would rattle along back to Trabuco Canyon is now a two-lane bike path next to a six-lane highway. In Omaha, cornfields fall to yet another mini mall, or box store, yet more blandly unappealing industry.

Notes From Elkhorn Nebraska

A quick 10-Minute Meditation! Check out www.patreon.com/clemthegreat for these to be delivered to your inbox weekly!

10-Minute Meditation

This is a short meditation to let go of physical pain that arises.
Please visit www.patreon.com/clemthegreat for weekly meditations and other personal meditation and energy healing resources.

10 Minute Meditation - Releasing Pain

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
First off I will say, so there’s no misunderstanding, I love you. 

This is not love that needs something from you, or is some sort of burden or expectation you need to carry around with you. I love you with our common heart. Common molecules, common history, common planet, common energy. We are One. I know this is not a popular belief these days with so much side-choosing, but it’s a fact. My love for you is the same energy that lies underneath the love I have for my self and for my family and my pets and my place of manifestation. Love, at the core of myself, this energy shared with you.

Also, I love your music. Your baked goods. The silly things you say and the way you make me laugh. Your capacity for compassion overwhelms me. Your ability to create beauty fills my heart with wonder. You are creative and magnificent and I am blown away at how you fix things, and how you help.

Dear Humans

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece. image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/ 
***
And what kind of limitations do we project on others in order to keep ourselves feeling safe and knowing? I had a dear friend once who was 30 years older than me, and I was a chameleon, changing daily in my direction. Every time I thought I would shock him with some new revelation, he would register no surprise, no concern, just an open-hearted exuberance for whatever wonky idea I came up with. It was so nourishing to know that he accepted me, no matter what Clem iteration met him that day.

How can we express this unconditional support for those in our lives? When we hear ourselves speak and we are speaking limitation and fear of change, can we catch the words and transform them? My friend wants a change of career or relationship, the young person takes a surprising turn of interest. When we express support for others we give ourselves a break, too, give ourselves permission to change.

Stepping Out Of A Box, Singing

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
It’s funny how naming something, really sitting and allowing the pain to rise and give it space and form, it’s funny how much gets released. In fact, when I look at how I felt then and how I feel now, I see just how much I’ve let go, just how much lighter my outlook. I sat in that studio and wrestled with all the darkness, all of those clawing beasts that kept me unhappy and confused and stuck, and I let them live in songs. And as songwriting goes, there must be a counterpoint to the darkness, and therefore sometimes you find redemption.

Our Default Is Joy

From the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
The Drover is like a cave, with low ceilings, brick walls and round stucco fireplaces built randomly into small rooms. The lighting is yellow and warm, and the chairs are low wooden ones with rounded backs that set you perfectly to the table. There is a vaguely Spanish feel in the big wooden doors and the beamed ceilings.

Shortly after being seated, a dark mound of bread loaf arrives with the knife stabbed in its heart. It is piping hot and served with iced butter. The whole place smells like the bread. The smell of baking bread affects me deeply in a primal place and I have zero ability to deny its call . I can say that in every fantasy of home life I have ever entertained, the place has smelled like this.

Meeting Barbara Stanwyck, The Drover, Omaha

As a special edition of the Bliss and Drumming podcast, Clementine reads this piece, recently published at https://memoirmag.com/nonfiction/laguna-main-by-clementine-moss/.
***
Sharona bleats from a nearby radio and I close my eyes and imagine Sharona, object of adoration. I imagine Jim Morrison, on a beach with a guitar, writing about his LA woman. I love the Doors. I move to ask if Becky likes the Doors, but her back stops the words from forming, glossy and solid and resolute in the bright sun. It seems that every back, every face these days locks me out. The words stay in my throat. Forget it. I lean back on sinking elbows and close my eyes against the glare.

Jim Morrison lolls on the beach in my mind, and I let go of the day and follow him down to this other world. Do women get to be so free, lounging, writing, owning their dreams? Who will write of me?

Laguna Main: Published by Memoir Magazine

From her blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
I also see this in the people I work with. I see that sometimes they don’t even realize that the patterns of misery they are caught have gradually let go in subtle ways, and when I ask after a few sessions about these old ways of being, it’s almost as if they’re surprised I’m asking. Someone who has not been able to sleep for years, for example, when I ask how they slept recently says, “pretty good,” not with any kind of amazement, but more like a matter of course. Whey wouldn’t they sleep well? It’s as if they don’t quite remember the angst of insomnia. Remarkable.

The Right Foot And Other Openings

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
We deep clean the house. We retrieve things from storage to sell. Now that we are out of work for months we start thinking about things to off-load in order to keep the lights on. We make tense financial plans. I order dry goods for just in case. We check in with family and send condolences to friends whose long-term plans have been cancelled, check in with the elderly neighbor.

And then, I wake up into a day where time is all mine. I find waiting for me all of these projects, all of these dreams and goals and plans, as present as birdsong and the chimes of Peter and Paul. I spend time in the morning in metta meditation, with my mind on all those who don’t have the resources I have, those who are ill and worried and alone. Then exercise, on the bike that I’m always too busy to use. Then the window-seat, and a reverie of now.

Sheltering In Place

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
It was funny, really, and later it brought to mind the article we had both read about the spike in divorce rates after the quarantine was lifted in China.

We had to venture out to the laundry. Harsh words were spoken after perceived carelessness. Then, escalation after a reconnaissance to the grocery.

We had been doing well up until then, enjoying the time sequestered and getting to spend time together in a way we rarely do. As two working musicians/managers, we often go for months without being in each others’ company. This serves to make time together feel rather precious. Thus the longevity, and the ease with giving the other plenty of autonomy.

Adding the outside world to our equation served to ignite a stress we’d each been feeling, and it all launched to the surface under the fluorescent lights.

Arguing About Death In A Laundromat

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
For the most part, the past week of quarantine has looked much the same as it has for the past couple of months. The preponderance of birds, riotous flower bloomings, quiet streets. Then, a warm spell in San Francisco sending folks out to the parks.

Overnight, it seems that facemasks have become obsolete, and big drunken parties of young people fill the grass. I don’t enter the park most days now, and walk Henry elsewhere. After months of lockdown, I can’t help but seeing that block-square grass patch as a big petri dish.

Better You And Me

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
The drum begins. I begin my journey on a bluff, overlooking the Pacific. Rolling grassy hills, the coastline rippling side to side, and the big birds delighting in the marine updraft. There is an opening to a cave there, to my left. The first time I entered this cave, a wave of fear washed over me because it was so dark. Then I remembered: this is my shamanic journey! Turn on the light! And light flooded in from above, highlighting the massive space. A soft dirt floor, ferns and the distant sound of water. A lower world where everyone I meet has my best interest at heart. 

For a couple of years, culminating in the past few months of the quarantine, I have been studying Shamanic Counseling with the teacher Isa Gucciardi. This path is a surprise in my life, and yet I also feel as though I’ve been making my way here the whole time.

Photo by <a href="/photographer/claudmey-56827">Claudia Meyer</a> from <a href="https://freeimages.com/">FreeImages</a>

The First Trance

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways in which human consciousness is transforming. For one thing people even a generation back didn’t grow up with the idea of “global community.” This concept is new in my lifetime. Once we were connected, first through the ease of travel and then through technology, our minds began to change. We started to realize that events across the planet have direct effect on us. Cause and effect became something different. Global.

This is a gift, I believe, as with this knowledge, we can’t help but eventually lose our provincial and self-centered ideas. We can’t live for ourselves anymore. We not only see directly how our actions affect others, we do this in the spotlight of humanity’s gaze.

Pocketful Of Stars

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clementine reads this piece.
***
A young man started showing up late nights, a sleight of hand artist who would entertain the patrons with card tricks. I’m not sure he was quite 21 years old. He was quiet and pale, with a sweetness to him. His talent was astonishing. The customers would get overwhelmed with his mastery, and they loved it.

When I describe tricks he performed, I am an unreliable narrator. My attitude with sleight of hand is of total trust. I want to be fooled. I guess most people watch the magician to catch the tell, to find the flaw and figure out the way the trick works, but I enter a state of complete surrender. I want the magician to succeed and leave me astounded.

Choosing Magic

From the blog http://www.blissanddrumming.com, Clem reads this piece.
***
I have spoken to many people during the pandemic who have made the best of the situation, and who feel guilty about the fact they are doing ‘okay.’ Our society has become a place in which to say that all is well makes us feel ignorant or guilty. I think it is important for us to recognize what is working and what is peaceful. There must be an energy that is in the center, a moderating well-being that is here between the poles of terrible and ignorant. By cultivating this feeling of ‘okay-ness,’ it expands. Feeling good is a generative energy. Our perception can change our experience, and our actions.

We might realize this same field of the night watchman exists in our greater reality. Is there a kind of hum beneath the surface, a kind of steady rhythm of breath in, breath out, that the whole of the planet experiences at all times, no matter what the dire situation being experienced? Beneath all the chaos, is all well?

All Is Well

Clementine is a writer and musician living in San Francisco. In this podcast, she reads entries in the blog www.blissanddrumming.com, in which she connects her spiritual practice with her life as a drummer in hard rock bands. Clementine teaches meditation and offers energy healing at www.awakeningthetrueself.com. For more on her music career, visit www.clemthegreat.com.

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