When she's ready to speak

The sea has its own language and if you know how to listen the trees give hints of when she's ready to speak.

I don't want to write today, that's the only reason I am.  This is discipline, what Beth and Amy have helped me learn with repeated reminders: No effort is wasted.  I woke up yesterday from a nap in the afternoon and could hear the tree-talk, the way the palm fronds were enlivening the air.  This is different from hearing them move in the wind.   It was raining, then it wasn't, then it was, then no.  There was a cloud-line of grey and gold light. There was dance on the air.  I got up, sad, unsure, didn't even comb my hair.  Just got my shoes and purse then drove to the beach.

I took pictures from PCH, thought of Aunt Lori.  Talked to Mandy in the spirit way.  Took off my flip-flops with my toes and walked down the stairs in to the sand.  And then there was stillness, and ocean-speak.  I just sat a long time and listened, the way the ocean noise is sometimes just like breath.

On Monday before my cousin Erin left to fly back to Maryland we took our annual dip in the sea to cleanse us of the winter funk. This is the first time it happened in the Pacific.  There will be more. After we got out, a pod of dolphins flipped and played in the ocean straight out in front of where we were.  Dolphins, who play just to play.  We laid there a long while, sang This Little Light of Mine, let the memories of her visit saturate.  We had burgers at a burger shack and then I drove her to LAX to say goodbye.  

There is nothing easy about this, it keeps saying in my head now, days later.  She reminded me of a memory in 1997, on the day our grandmother died.  Erin was about to be 12.  I was 20.  We were driving. I was driving--her, our four other girl cousins in my car--the oldest was 13, and Total Eclipse of the Heart came on and I explained that that's what happened.  Our hearts went dark just for a minute when Gram left, but now every time we hear that song it would be her saying hi and bringing her light.  I cried, fat funny tears sitting in the diner on Sunday, when she reminded me of that.  We both did.

It's amazing how family will always keep us tethered to who we truly are.  It's amazing how easy this is, and also how hard.

And this is what I am trying to get through to him

Yes, teacher, yes... I believe you, he says, but I don't quit because we're not at his edge yet.  I go on, certain to keep our gaze fixed.

Good, I'm glad you believe it, now try it.  I promise if you practice your negatives you will be a better fighter. Understand?  I promise~

From his gaze on mine I feel his whole sphere encompass then retreat and I know I got my in--that he's heard me.  What he does with it is up to him, but without question what I have shared will sink in.  The seed it waters, that may come later...maybe back home in Brazil, maybe in conversation with his mother.  Who knows?  But the concept saturated, and that's all that matters to me in the end.

He is twenty-something, with achingly good looks, the kind you feel in your muscles. He's easy to like and uses the charm of his smile and eyes, these gifts that have given him many passes in life, to keep class light.  I like having him as part of the dynamic and so do all the ladies, which presents a whole other all the time behavior lesson of keeping male and female energies equated.  Human dynamics and being in the heat of it, I love this stuff.  I am a natural educator not by my trade but because I am always, all the time learning. If this is the case for you than you get it--you are all the time also teaching, too.

And this is what I am trying to get through to him.  Plasticity.  The stretchiness of the brain, literally.  How when we challenge ourselves to a new concept, mental, physical, emotional, the details don't matter, it's the "newness" or "challenge" factor that engages a chemistry change.  With practice, this new opening actually impacts all our current rhythms.  We can even change our muscle memory, re-establish all new patterns this way.

So what I want is for him to learn the negative forms of contractions--this area where there is a gap just subtle enough in class for only I to see.  He just quietly scoots around negatives, so that's the place I want his eyes forced open, and I am challenging him, and he is a cage fighter, obsessed with MMA, and obsession--passion--of any kind impresses and excites me so I know to appeal to this.  And I know, enough to promise, that what I am saying is right.  I hated grammar, hated it, the only reason I ever took english EVER was to write.  Now, step by step with patience and quiet I have to learn each rule so that my students can understand.  It hurts my head.   And it's made my writing so damn clean but is it that or my commitment to the new postures in yoga I am coercing my body to learn?  The connections are stunning and clear, as I write long hours away until the dark threads its rightness, its ease of night finesse right into my skin. I have whole stories in front of me or poems completed, and new ones charging to begin. This is yoga, and grammar, and human behavior lesson 101.  So I take aim and he gets it.  Learn your negatives.  It will help you fight.

When I drop his gaze he smiles a to the side smile and gives me a pound.  I get it I get it teacher...Open your mind.

He gets the concept, what he does now is up to him.