Here is a poem I wrote last night in the margin of Women Who Run With the Wolves:
I meet her: La Llorona, she says
I am ruined.
There is shadow
of death mask
of blood &
dirt
on her face.
I tell her
Come close,
close to me.
I listen to what she tells me.
In this way
she knows:
she has been saved.
* * *
It is hard to keep doing what we do, I think to myself. There are roots to roast, clothes to put away, an attic to be cleaned out or at least climbed in to--to make room for storage--cushions to be brought in off the porch and at least four calls to return since yesterday. There is being nice to one another, and noticing the weather. This is without school, without the reality of a lover that I yearn to cradle--of course I never let reality stop me--without children or a husband, without even a regular job. This is without even contemplating time to write. Still it goes, our funny programmed ways of continuing: falling from bed to floor in expectation of repetitive shelter and food. Once we get to the other side of ourselves, have confronted all it is we have to own the love and the fear we then have the choice, and it looks like La Loba, La Mariposa, Skeleton Woman, La Inocente, She With Seal Skin...All the stories our mothers or their mothers ever told, great ancestress, great lovers of children, of men, of each other, great tender warriors and wipers of tears. Kel, what we talked about yesterday on the phone, Beth what we talked about days before. I say Clarrisa Pinkola said it best and she said it in her book last night to me, before bed.
...it is standing still long enough to let the spirit find you. It is said that all that you are seeking is also seeking you, that if you lay still, sit still, it will find you. It has been waiting for you a long time. Once it is here, dont move away. Rest. See what happens next.
Ahhh, beautiful. Amen Amen.
November 8, 2010
November 7, 2010
To believe in this living...
Opposite Direction is playing in the corner it's half-time the Ravens are up and Jotto's on her way to meet dad and I for half-price pubgrup and orange crushes for them. They are Sue and Rich's favorite a talented band that plays mostly 70's covers. Last summer they were here listening to the music every single Sunday. John Prine is on right now. My heart tweaks, I look out the zipped-up plastic window-side at the harbor, the big local fishing boats, the seagulls fighting just above the water of the bay. It is perfect blue and gold out. The kind of day that makes people just stare wistfully at the sea. It's November in West Ocean City and when the sunlight goes low and yellow across the dusk sky I walk to the top of the street past the fish hauls and wharf boats to where you can look directly across the water to the inlet, the roller coaster and water tower of downtown each high on the horizon, and I take pictures in my favorite light of the day. It's cold out, my hands get so cold I cant feel my fingers walking back to Harborside to meet dad.
My cousin Timmy turned 21 here, Sean and Jamie and some of us spent the Sunday after they got engaged here, two Christmas' ago Seanie when she walked to the ladies room sat at these exact highboys and told me he was going to ask Jame to marry him. We told her we were crying about our Pappaw when she came back.
It's nice, these little places we find ourselves when we happen to find ourselves "in-between." Jotto and I sit at the corner and watch enough of the 4th quarter together to know that the Ravens are going to win, then she leaves to get her son. I happily agree to help her paint her new apartment later this week and yet again, as I hug her to leave, this feeling of absolute gratitude washes through me. This sense of utter thankfulness that is translating today as satisfaction, just simple in-moment satisfaction, for the good things that exist in my life. It's the same exact way I feel looking out the window, listening to Sue and Rich's favorite band cover John Prine. When she leaves dad grabs my arm and gushes O sis! I love this song. It's Ventura Highway. We turn on our stools, rest our backs against the bar and jam with the band. I am smiling, not wildly happy or sad, just smiling. Content with me and dad, the outside water and light, the music, with what is...
November 6, 2010
RE-POST: List. If I were Queen For A Day
This is a re-post, originally featured on my blog when my blog was just a baby and me just an obnoxious grl trying to learn to learn her voice in public. Now, I'm still as obnoxious if that translates to bravery and exploring/standing your ground AND I feel I know my voice in a true way, too. Thanks Web-Log! I go back to this post every so often, because the voice is there clearly for the early days, but more, I like the reminders:
LIST
1. NO CELL PHONE USE IN RESTAURANTS OR STORES. Obnoxious cell phone use is Western entitlement at its best. I don't care if its your sister or Aunt Jodie calling just for a sec get off the phone and focus on the task in front of you. Also, you are in full right to not call people back if you are currently involved in something else, even if that something else is the very important necessary for your soul mandate of DOING NOTHING. This stress and always being busy and worry of us and our culture is compacted by the insane idea that just because we all have cell phones now and Gen Y never knew any different that we all have to call each other back right away! Or feel guilty for it if we don't. No. Engage in the life in front of you without deluded expectations. When it is time to be on the phone, then be someone fully engaged with your friend or loved one or business person or whatever on the phone. No excuses.
2 . LEARN TO BE ALONE. QUIET. BY YOURSELF. I don't care who you are, I am suspicious of anyone who can't sit a while doing nothing but sitting a while in the presence of their own soul. Take mandatory quiet time or time-out time with you and you alone. This is different than doing nothing. Though it is, after the initial restlessness dies down, a genuine relief to take a big breath and say to yourself, No, no, there is nothing left to do right now other than just be me with me. Make it a custom. Explore the world you are unto your self. Should the Death face come today, or the hangman or the angel and It stands there and says to you what good did you do, you can say to Yourself, I knew quiet. I surrendered to what I came here with, to what I'll go out of here with. What more courageous thing could there be?
3. HOLD DOORS OPEN FOR PEOPLE.
4. SMILE. On both number three and four: The following is perhaps the most simple principle there is, applicable to or perhaps even relegated by the beating heart. We like to feel good, we don't like to feel bad. We ALL have this in common, even the birds and the deers and my cat and your dog--just for them good is food and bad is danger of predator. Feeling good is a contagion as is feeling bad--literally, the chemicals behind each of these emotional reactions do nothing but stimulate more of the same chemicals. Chemicals are the body's ensured unconscious response to see to it that those good experiences are enhanced and repeated and those bad are feared and avoided. There is great , great power in this. So do your part! Make a small difference every day. Help people feel good. It will make you feel good, too.
5. BE CONSISTENT. Stick to your word. Do what you'll say you do and don't say you'll do something if you can't or you wont or you have to drag your feet about it because secretly it makes you feel bad or stresses you out or drains your energy. If you change your mind don't fear the consequences or make excuses. Simply see to it that your actions now stick to your new word.
6. RECOGNIZE WHAT YOU RESIST PERSISTS. Simply put, wherever you go there you are. What you don't want to deal with will constantly nag and drag you down all quiet or loud until you are forced to confront it in an explosive manner. Be good to yourself--have courage to look at your nagging good or bad feelings even if initially scary and running you down. This is called preventative action. Or personal responsiblity. Be easy on yourself when yet again you slow down only to find, oh damn, my eyes were closed again.
7. TRAVEL. I don't mean go to hotels and restaurants for 7 nights and 6 days. I mean get out on the road in your own state or in a foreign country and find the things and try the things the locals do there. See a new part of the world with new eyes but with the same precious sky and earth and sun. Keep yourself fresh, vital. Come home and see how very alive and boundless you're able to feel in your own little home corner of routine and regularity. PRACTICE THIS.
8. REMEMBER INFINITY. At its base level the world, our whole universe in its entirety is nothing more than endless amounts of protons neutrons electrons and that odd space in-between. The very base level application of this: anything is possible. ANYTHING. That makes everything ordinary extraordinary, and everything extraordinary actually quite ordinary. Modern science itself is a mere hundred years old! As recent as the late 1800's people actually believed that the size of one's skull actually determined not only their intelligence but their superiority--making women and non-whites "scientifically" incapable of certain levels of intelligence and inferior as well. Stay open. Don't settle.
9. TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Be brave enough to try something different for the sake of your own infinite human spirit. The most dangerous thing isn't conformity, it's unconsciousness. Recognize the world for the series of opposites that it is. Whatever action you take throws equivalent energy in the opposite direction. So if your a peace lover go militant for a day. A godlover go totally nihilist tonight! A warrior soldier sit passive attentive Zazen all morning, action of non-action. Counter-balance yourself. Stay fresh--open yourself to the content of this--avowing yourself to the experience of the present, not a dictate of your own reactive unconscious measures.
10. FORGET WORDS. Forget words, forget lists, forget all you've read. Words are words. Yes, they are the first form of contractual obligation of action. Yes they harness the power inside of you in sound form given out to the air and to ears or the eyes and to the breath and the water and the fire of the sun. They are the first tangible form of action after your thoughts. But action is every step you take. So forget words, this list, all you've ever read or heard. Touch down within yourself until you realize, until you know for sure that who you are is how you be. Make your own list. Be your own King, Queen.
11. BREAK THE RULES, every one, on your own list. Remedy your unconsciousness. Don't be afraid of it. If you are accept you are. Then love yourself, forgive. And open again, again, again. It's the surest tool you have to bring you closer to other human beings or breathing or living creations.
12. CLOSENESS IS A BEAUTIFUL THING. Realize the choice is yours: closeness could be the very reason that you're here.
LIST
1. NO CELL PHONE USE IN RESTAURANTS OR STORES. Obnoxious cell phone use is Western entitlement at its best. I don't care if its your sister or Aunt Jodie calling just for a sec get off the phone and focus on the task in front of you. Also, you are in full right to not call people back if you are currently involved in something else, even if that something else is the very important necessary for your soul mandate of DOING NOTHING. This stress and always being busy and worry of us and our culture is compacted by the insane idea that just because we all have cell phones now and Gen Y never knew any different that we all have to call each other back right away! Or feel guilty for it if we don't. No. Engage in the life in front of you without deluded expectations. When it is time to be on the phone, then be someone fully engaged with your friend or loved one or business person or whatever on the phone. No excuses.
2 . LEARN TO BE ALONE. QUIET. BY YOURSELF. I don't care who you are, I am suspicious of anyone who can't sit a while doing nothing but sitting a while in the presence of their own soul. Take mandatory quiet time or time-out time with you and you alone. This is different than doing nothing. Though it is, after the initial restlessness dies down, a genuine relief to take a big breath and say to yourself, No, no, there is nothing left to do right now other than just be me with me. Make it a custom. Explore the world you are unto your self. Should the Death face come today, or the hangman or the angel and It stands there and says to you what good did you do, you can say to Yourself, I knew quiet. I surrendered to what I came here with, to what I'll go out of here with. What more courageous thing could there be?
3. HOLD DOORS OPEN FOR PEOPLE.
4. SMILE. On both number three and four: The following is perhaps the most simple principle there is, applicable to or perhaps even relegated by the beating heart. We like to feel good, we don't like to feel bad. We ALL have this in common, even the birds and the deers and my cat and your dog--just for them good is food and bad is danger of predator. Feeling good is a contagion as is feeling bad--literally, the chemicals behind each of these emotional reactions do nothing but stimulate more of the same chemicals. Chemicals are the body's ensured unconscious response to see to it that those good experiences are enhanced and repeated and those bad are feared and avoided. There is great , great power in this. So do your part! Make a small difference every day. Help people feel good. It will make you feel good, too.
5. BE CONSISTENT. Stick to your word. Do what you'll say you do and don't say you'll do something if you can't or you wont or you have to drag your feet about it because secretly it makes you feel bad or stresses you out or drains your energy. If you change your mind don't fear the consequences or make excuses. Simply see to it that your actions now stick to your new word.
6. RECOGNIZE WHAT YOU RESIST PERSISTS. Simply put, wherever you go there you are. What you don't want to deal with will constantly nag and drag you down all quiet or loud until you are forced to confront it in an explosive manner. Be good to yourself--have courage to look at your nagging good or bad feelings even if initially scary and running you down. This is called preventative action. Or personal responsiblity. Be easy on yourself when yet again you slow down only to find, oh damn, my eyes were closed again.
7. TRAVEL. I don't mean go to hotels and restaurants for 7 nights and 6 days. I mean get out on the road in your own state or in a foreign country and find the things and try the things the locals do there. See a new part of the world with new eyes but with the same precious sky and earth and sun. Keep yourself fresh, vital. Come home and see how very alive and boundless you're able to feel in your own little home corner of routine and regularity. PRACTICE THIS.
8. REMEMBER INFINITY. At its base level the world, our whole universe in its entirety is nothing more than endless amounts of protons neutrons electrons and that odd space in-between. The very base level application of this: anything is possible. ANYTHING. That makes everything ordinary extraordinary, and everything extraordinary actually quite ordinary. Modern science itself is a mere hundred years old! As recent as the late 1800's people actually believed that the size of one's skull actually determined not only their intelligence but their superiority--making women and non-whites "scientifically" incapable of certain levels of intelligence and inferior as well. Stay open. Don't settle.
9. TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Be brave enough to try something different for the sake of your own infinite human spirit. The most dangerous thing isn't conformity, it's unconsciousness. Recognize the world for the series of opposites that it is. Whatever action you take throws equivalent energy in the opposite direction. So if your a peace lover go militant for a day. A godlover go totally nihilist tonight! A warrior soldier sit passive attentive Zazen all morning, action of non-action. Counter-balance yourself. Stay fresh--open yourself to the content of this--avowing yourself to the experience of the present, not a dictate of your own reactive unconscious measures.
10. FORGET WORDS. Forget words, forget lists, forget all you've read. Words are words. Yes, they are the first form of contractual obligation of action. Yes they harness the power inside of you in sound form given out to the air and to ears or the eyes and to the breath and the water and the fire of the sun. They are the first tangible form of action after your thoughts. But action is every step you take. So forget words, this list, all you've ever read or heard. Touch down within yourself until you realize, until you know for sure that who you are is how you be. Make your own list. Be your own King, Queen.
11. BREAK THE RULES, every one, on your own list. Remedy your unconsciousness. Don't be afraid of it. If you are accept you are. Then love yourself, forgive. And open again, again, again. It's the surest tool you have to bring you closer to other human beings or breathing or living creations.
12. CLOSENESS IS A BEAUTIFUL THING. Realize the choice is yours: closeness could be the very reason that you're here.
November 3, 2010
Harvest-End After-Wedding Thoughts
Really, I wasn't expecting this.
Friday night is a cross-quarter though, the last holiday of the harvest year, lunar Samhain (which I still don't get that people dont understand this stuff about life, it's so simple a part of understanding to me it's commonsensical. How can one look at something easy for example as the rising and falling of high and low tide and not get the import of movement of sun and moon?? Anyway. Not here to soapbox or vilify or happily call movement magic, but it makes me roll eyes even so...) And so be Friday what it is, this time of year isn't about a quickening as much as a great still, in order to show what is just plain TRUE: what's before me now is the truth, on every level, try as I wish to or strain as fear causes me sometimes to, in order to see or choose not to see.
I am not the same woman I was when I left last week and yet somehow deeply, clearly, I am, through and through. Sean's wedding was beautiful, out of a story book. Perfection, all the clear crisp colors of love and loyalty and friends and family and Fall. He texted Saturday morning to hug Jamie, his almost-wife, we were getting ready she calm as a kitten her dad cooking for us and bloody mary's and all the girls giddy with hair in curls and make-up half-done running around in our robes. Then he texted minutes later that he was so nervous he was puking. I called Brian ASAP he said dad was freaking told me all the last minute unravelling stuff that was causing dad his red-faced growly take-control wild barking ways which is how he loves, and then Brian said too: Dad took Seanie off under his arm for a walk. And that of course set my nerves in and turned my tears on, too. Little brother, o god my little brother this one thing I can not do for you, I was sick with a twist in my stomach and it was us again in my heart us since he was born and I was three years old him this little perfect angel I would over myself love forever no matter what and take care of and protect, and on the party-bus drive to the chapel Sean called Jamie freaking out where were the rings and Jamie cool and collect handled it and my eyes heavy with tears because this is her job now and thank you life for making her so tender and right for him, so gentle and loving and beautiful and strong. And I swallowed the tears because she said NONE! and I knew that's what she needed, peace not emotionalism but I don't do well with that, quelling my emotions so during the ceremony hives came out on me and I wasn't right the rest of the night, which was ok, because the bubble of pure and love around them was. And not only was Sean always who I vowed to protect, but in older years he was more like a dad: showing me how a man could and should and can be, and so I guess this is how I learned to let him protect me. And he knows this, my gratitude, every chance I can I've thanked him for showing such important roles to me. I love him so, I do I do. And Jamie and her family, the tenderness of it all, how beautiful she was and they all are, how touchingly real and meant to be.
And at Erin's after it was all over and before we found the dark cafe for homemade Sunday dinner, my cousin-sister she let me lay next to her and let me cry and listened to the last two months of my life...Acupuncture school indecisiveness and book-writing and unemployment denied, Josh and closing the door on all that, and Sean too and living with mom and dad and when I woke Monday morning in her bed it was alright, I was peaceful again and felt so sure of my life. I pulled to the bottom of her hill and my logic telling me to drive to Ellicot City but instead, sitting there tree-yellow and red hill with peeks of blue brilliant sky between, I turned right because it felt right and drove Frederick Road the four miles or so the long industry and ghetto-lined old faces on the street sunshine drive in to the heart of the city where it meets MLK; and every song is a love-song when you say goodbye to someone and that morning I don't mean Sean. Which was happily puzzling to me but not in a way I had or have the energy to figure out because timing is what it all comes down to--but for the first time in a long time--maybe since ever? My heart is cleaned out of the people that command it, so maybe I finally am getting to be free and have new chances of the what is really best and meant for me.
I asked mom this morning, if Baltimore is what I really care about, and I do I do I love that city, I love it and know it the way I love how my own feet move or my own blood paces up or slows down...how to explain this other than it is where I was born, not perhaps where I specifically grew up but where I was born and where I went to be with family the first 12 or so years of my life so that is intrinsic enough. But this is shamanistic, also, what I learned for sure when I lived on the road after reading about it so many times in so many different indigenous, traditional writings. The land holds it's own energies, the very elements that make up the environment, and it is this that draws the personality then of the culture and the people: either in a way that draws people to flow with it in harmony, or causes them to fight against it because they are fighting, on an elemental level, themselves, their own "nature"...but anyway soapbox again, but is it? I am suddenly re-questioning that idea of home. I've made no secrets about the Baltimore-trance hold that I've been under, but if that is the case then why aren't I there yet? The whole thing with Brooks and Mike Cades showing up again this weekend and that Warehouse dream imploding how it did...
It is all flat, laid out before me now and I in the center looking side to side, like some book I am in the middle of both writing and reading. And that is all I know to do, keep writing. The only thing. My bills will pile up and my friends will continue to call where are you Kel and Seanie and Jame will come home from Mexico and go back to Memphis and finally have some time to relax and love will sit around me like a halo or some place that is waiting when I close my eyes and dream. I'll write this book til it's done, loooord aunts uncles everyone, dont ask me what's next because right now I am content with I do not know, or at least, I will write my book til the end that is all I know to do.
Friday night is a cross-quarter though, the last holiday of the harvest year, lunar Samhain (which I still don't get that people dont understand this stuff about life, it's so simple a part of understanding to me it's commonsensical. How can one look at something easy for example as the rising and falling of high and low tide and not get the import of movement of sun and moon?? Anyway. Not here to soapbox or vilify or happily call movement magic, but it makes me roll eyes even so...) And so be Friday what it is, this time of year isn't about a quickening as much as a great still, in order to show what is just plain TRUE: what's before me now is the truth, on every level, try as I wish to or strain as fear causes me sometimes to, in order to see or choose not to see.
I am not the same woman I was when I left last week and yet somehow deeply, clearly, I am, through and through. Sean's wedding was beautiful, out of a story book. Perfection, all the clear crisp colors of love and loyalty and friends and family and Fall. He texted Saturday morning to hug Jamie, his almost-wife, we were getting ready she calm as a kitten her dad cooking for us and bloody mary's and all the girls giddy with hair in curls and make-up half-done running around in our robes. Then he texted minutes later that he was so nervous he was puking. I called Brian ASAP he said dad was freaking told me all the last minute unravelling stuff that was causing dad his red-faced growly take-control wild barking ways which is how he loves, and then Brian said too: Dad took Seanie off under his arm for a walk. And that of course set my nerves in and turned my tears on, too. Little brother, o god my little brother this one thing I can not do for you, I was sick with a twist in my stomach and it was us again in my heart us since he was born and I was three years old him this little perfect angel I would over myself love forever no matter what and take care of and protect, and on the party-bus drive to the chapel Sean called Jamie freaking out where were the rings and Jamie cool and collect handled it and my eyes heavy with tears because this is her job now and thank you life for making her so tender and right for him, so gentle and loving and beautiful and strong. And I swallowed the tears because she said NONE! and I knew that's what she needed, peace not emotionalism but I don't do well with that, quelling my emotions so during the ceremony hives came out on me and I wasn't right the rest of the night, which was ok, because the bubble of pure and love around them was. And not only was Sean always who I vowed to protect, but in older years he was more like a dad: showing me how a man could and should and can be, and so I guess this is how I learned to let him protect me. And he knows this, my gratitude, every chance I can I've thanked him for showing such important roles to me. I love him so, I do I do. And Jamie and her family, the tenderness of it all, how beautiful she was and they all are, how touchingly real and meant to be.
And at Erin's after it was all over and before we found the dark cafe for homemade Sunday dinner, my cousin-sister she let me lay next to her and let me cry and listened to the last two months of my life...Acupuncture school indecisiveness and book-writing and unemployment denied, Josh and closing the door on all that, and Sean too and living with mom and dad and when I woke Monday morning in her bed it was alright, I was peaceful again and felt so sure of my life. I pulled to the bottom of her hill and my logic telling me to drive to Ellicot City but instead, sitting there tree-yellow and red hill with peeks of blue brilliant sky between, I turned right because it felt right and drove Frederick Road the four miles or so the long industry and ghetto-lined old faces on the street sunshine drive in to the heart of the city where it meets MLK; and every song is a love-song when you say goodbye to someone and that morning I don't mean Sean. Which was happily puzzling to me but not in a way I had or have the energy to figure out because timing is what it all comes down to--but for the first time in a long time--maybe since ever? My heart is cleaned out of the people that command it, so maybe I finally am getting to be free and have new chances of the what is really best and meant for me.
I asked mom this morning, if Baltimore is what I really care about, and I do I do I love that city, I love it and know it the way I love how my own feet move or my own blood paces up or slows down...how to explain this other than it is where I was born, not perhaps where I specifically grew up but where I was born and where I went to be with family the first 12 or so years of my life so that is intrinsic enough. But this is shamanistic, also, what I learned for sure when I lived on the road after reading about it so many times in so many different indigenous, traditional writings. The land holds it's own energies, the very elements that make up the environment, and it is this that draws the personality then of the culture and the people: either in a way that draws people to flow with it in harmony, or causes them to fight against it because they are fighting, on an elemental level, themselves, their own "nature"...but anyway soapbox again, but is it? I am suddenly re-questioning that idea of home. I've made no secrets about the Baltimore-trance hold that I've been under, but if that is the case then why aren't I there yet? The whole thing with Brooks and Mike Cades showing up again this weekend and that Warehouse dream imploding how it did...
It is all flat, laid out before me now and I in the center looking side to side, like some book I am in the middle of both writing and reading. And that is all I know to do, keep writing. The only thing. My bills will pile up and my friends will continue to call where are you Kel and Seanie and Jame will come home from Mexico and go back to Memphis and finally have some time to relax and love will sit around me like a halo or some place that is waiting when I close my eyes and dream. I'll write this book til it's done, loooord aunts uncles everyone, dont ask me what's next because right now I am content with I do not know, or at least, I will write my book til the end that is all I know to do.
November 1, 2010
WATCH THIS. The Divorce Papers Between Us...
Facebook users, go here. My God and if you haven't yet, check out Brave New Voices...I literally watched the semi-finals on HBO totally awe-struck. I have hope again bc of these youth...
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