Waxtober 17

When I look at today’s waxing, I think Hmmm… and I feel my jaw clench as I purse my lips until they almost touch my nose… I think to myself that’s it’s an odd reaction and I wonder why I’ve done it… I look at the image and I see parts that remind my of lips and parts that remind me of the roof of my mouth… I think about the ridges of scar tissue that run along the inside of both my cheeks…Ridges that have my dentist shaking his head in despair as his attempts to file down the edges of my teeth have not resolved the problem. He can’t work out how fresh scars still appear. It took me a while to work that one out, until I caught myself in the act of chewing the inside of my face off to stiffle a burst of inappropriate laughter… I realised that although I do laugh out loud an awful lot, I do also frequently bite back my guffaws if I feel that they will come off as being unkind or spiteful… I’m not overly concerned with being liked but I don’t like to think that people will think I’m deliberately mean spirited…

I grew up constantly being told to shut my mouth, hold my tongue, bite my tongue, etc. etc. I have many early memories of being cornered on the landing between the ottoman and the door to the front bedroom, my mother squatted down, her face in mine, her hand around my neck, telling me – You keep your mouth shut or else! I’ll break your neck. Her accent sounding out a rhyme of break with neck… brek ya neck, brek ya neck… I thank her for that, as that in part gave rise to my thirst for drawing… my eye for a loophole and a sense of humour that played her words back against her… I took great delight in not answering adults when in her company as I knew she’d be angered by my dumb insolence and further angered when once they’d gone, she’d demand to know why I refused to speak and I would say – Because you told me to keep quiet! It was worth the inevitable beating and the upcoming future drilling and instructions as to exactly what to say next time… Over time, I realised this was less about by manners and more about her anxiety that I’d let slip her secrets… whether that be mentioning her male visitors or outing her to the neighbours by calling them by the nicknames she gave them… I remember with perverse pride the battering I recieved after one of the neighbours asked me if I was well and I replied in my mother’s sneering tones – I’m very well thank you. How are you Porridge Strangler?

You’d think you’d live and learn… And in some ways, I guess I did… I learnt that I had a rapid fire wit and I could talk my way both in and out of trouble with mostly equal ease… Moving on further… well, I just found this in some old astrology notes…

I have Mercury in Libra in 11th house – Looking at Virgo, I have Sun, Jupiter, Uranus, Pluto all in 10th and Mars in 9th – Looking at Gemini, I have Black Moon in 6th house.When I think about how I think… I’ve always imagined my mind like one of those mercury mazes where thinks scatter and take different paths and roll around until finally settling in one big mass in the centre…Communicating particularly through work, I see my job as having little to do with putting my personal ideas across and having more to do with helping people to draw out and analyse their own thoughts…When I’ve been in group settings either through work or studies, I’ve often had people gravitate towards me to ask me to mediate situations or to gather the group’s thoughts to present overviews etc… I tend to avoid getting into arguments not because I’m trying to keep the peace but more that if I get to the point where I’m going to get opinionated then I go in fully armed to the teeth with all the facts and I can fire off like a nail gun…I am naturally good at mediating but I get annoyed if people think they can use me to voice things that they are too scared to say… I also get into sticky situations when people ask me to tell them what I think… My appetite for analysis, when invited is somewhat rampant… I’m very pragmatic and that doesn’t always land well with people who only want to hear the fluffy stuff…

Anyway… back to my waxing… it reminded that I came across a technique to silence my noisy head… Funnily enough, a form of tongue control… You take the tip of the tongue and hold it against the roof of the mouth, behind the front two teeth. Letting the tongue become motionless, somehow silences thoughts… It works pretty quickly, just a couple of seconds and my mind completely clears… Though now I think about it, I recognise that alongside the cheek biting habit, I have of late, developed another habit… When I find conversations ??? errmmm… let’s say unpallatable (as I do have an appetite for puns…) then this tongue trick becomes more extreme and instead of being behind the teeth, my tongues slides pack and presses hard into the ridges in the roof of my mouth… until my jaw is clenched and I give myself a tension headache… Why do I this? Because I guess, I decided that it’s best to pick your fights… and most things aren’t worth the effort of arguing… let it go and it’ll soon be forgot… I know full well, I can be over vocal at times and I figure this does come from my silenced upbringing and deciding hey! I’m an adult! You’re not the boss of me…

But, I see another layer speaking through this waxing… It’s very very pink and in the centre there is a shape that looks like maybe it could be a rose quartz… I see this waxing and I hear voices that say…

When you speak from your heart, people will not always like what you have to say. Say it anyway! Words cause ripples… Take note when this happens… Do you need to smooth things over? Maybe you should let these ripples ride out and become waves goodbye as you clear your pool of things that have no business to be swimming there…