Too much time has elapsed since I’ve written here.  It makes me restless, pacing out words and ideas in my mind, rummaging haphazardly through the half-baked, misshapen, potential loaves of essays or poems, which keep ending up swept away by the currents of ongoing, immediate Life.  I’m insisting to myself that it will be a good practice to just write, to not censor too much, to immerse myself in that river of expression, to leap into the arms of vulnerability again and again.

There is so much I cannot write about.  This is what comes to mind.  Those Life currents, they keep flowing me into places I never imagined and can hardly describe.  I have changed.  I have changed!  Back in October, I knew that a metamorphosis was coming over me.  I couldn’t predict then how I would feel now.  But this I can say with conviction: every moment, every hard-won or sudden insight, every bitter anguish, every effervescent jubilance, every shadow has been a thunderous gift in my shaking lap.

There was a threshold, and I crossed it.  There were thoughts and people and actions to summon, and I summoned them.

The arms of vulnerability were the safest to leap into, it turns out.  To contemplate all that I might have missed, had I chosen to be silent, wordless, withdrawn, “safe,”– it makes me shudder to think of all that I might have foregone, all the good and sweet and hard work of Living that would not have happened.

The days and nights seize me by the waist, lean in close, and whisper, over and over: Welcome to the dance, Life-lover.

 

What you should know about me, and perhaps about yourself, is that I love.

Beyond lines and words breathes an embodied animal, gazing wide-eyed, devouring, inhaling, attuned to the tiniest caress of a breeze, overwhelmed by the aroma of lilacs, gulping in great draughts the luscious liquid of life.

Every moment and molecule, imbued with this glowing substance, this love juice, is a miracle begging to be savored.

Love, that plummeting swan dive, is my hourly companion, my well of inspiration, my soothing comfort and my perfect torment.

The lilacs.  I give them to you.  Gather them in your arms.  Let the scent buckle you at the knees.  There was never anything more important than this.

I’ve been immersed in a bit of violet ecstasy.

The springtime is in full-throated, melodic trill, warbling out flowers and leaves in an erotic rapture of blossoming and unfurling.  It isn’t hard to succumb to that siren song.  Shedding the dark cloak of the past winter, I find myself responding to the wild and surprising call of oceanic love, with mind, body, and soul erupting with poetry and passion and the relentless desire to connect.

Commingled in the flourishing rapture is a rainfall of tears, enough to fill the deep, wide ache I carry with me at every moment.  So well-watered is this constantly-twinging ache, I expect it will extend its own tendrils skyward and prepare to set fruit.  These stretching, growing pains keep me awake at night; the fruits it will bear will be unlike any I’ve ever seen.  But oh, how the tears burn on my face, how they scorch the ground as I lean over to harvest the violets that bloom right now.

These are impractical, lunatic days.  I cherish them with astonishment, dazed gratitude, weeping great splashing love-tears, thrashing, becoming still, becoming blissful, enfolded in universal awe.

I took a nap today.  That doesn’t seem all that extraordinary, although for me, it’s pretty unusual.  I was overcome with tiredness and had the opportunity to curl up and zonk right out, and as I did so, a dream unfurled.

I was in the house of a friend, a woman I’ve never met in person but who has reached out to me in my waking life to offer solace and understanding.  Somehow, I had found my way to her distant house and taken refuge.  She wasn’t there, herself, but there were objects and rooms that I was supposed to examine and learn from, quietly, by myself.  I found a small journal, filled with notes and drawings, and realized it was kept by two people, writing back and forth in a call-and-response fashion, a private, interwoven marvel of thought and poetry and art; I was meant to see it.  It had been set out for me, opened at a certain page, inviting me to fall into it.  I held it carefully in my hands and read and read.  Then I had to go to the bathroom and went in and there was no toilet; I thought, what am I supposed to do now?  As I was standing there weighing my options, feeling the bodily urgency of needing to go, I turned around and a receptacle appeared, with a hole in the bottom that had no end.  Clearly that was where I was meant to relieve myself.  I felt a rush of appreciation that my conundrum had been resolved.  But what was I releasing?  Where was it going?  It wasn’t for me to understand, only to let go into a vast unknown.  It was a little frightening, but then a sense of great peace descended.  I eventually reemerged into the living room, noting each potted plant, the wall-hangings, the stacks of papers, the evidence of a life not consumed by tidiness, and felt welcome and safe.

 

 Image from:  http://real-life-journals.blogspot.com/2011/01/it-becomes-outrageous.html

great gulps of green
in the Berkshire May
tiny chartreuse tree-blooms
blowing across the road
and up into my mind

the river glitters and laughs
in burbling currents and stones
irrepressible liquid giggling

red-tail hawk wheeling above
beams a sharp-eyed message on the feathered air-
you are in me, looking down
on the ecstatic springtime of your middle age

crossing the Appalachian Trail
a glimpse of that brown footpath
is enough to evoke every burning step
of a thousand-mile journey
every flower-bedecked mountainside
that ever wildly yellowly bloomed

it’s enough to linger and warble
gypsy bird
on that freeway in the sky
tangled up in blue

I read an inspiring article yesterday, taking as a springboard a quote from poet Charles Bukowski, “find what you love and let it kill you.”  It was written by a concert pianist named James Rhodes, and although it was about his love and mad dedication to music, his sentiments extend far beyond music.  I thought to myself, I know exactly what he’s talking about.  I want to die in the arms of that love.

What do you love?  This is the question I want to ask everyone I see.  What do you love?  Not just feel vaguely intrigued by; not stating what you think you should love; no, no, none of that.  What do you love so much it fills up your body and mind with an ecstatic heat that doesn’t quit?  It doesn’t matter what, or whom, anyone else loves; put that right out of your mind.  It doesn’t matter what other people might think or judge or ridicule or be horrified by.  It doesn’t matter if others have the same or different loves.  What do you, YOU, love?  Can you love yourself enough to be honest?  Can you drop your own judgment?  And further, once you have zeroed in and landed on your loves, can you pursue them so diligently that you will let it kill you?

I realize this prospect of dying is frightening for many.  Listen, though, you know I’m right: you’re going to die anyway.  You’re mortal.  You have no idea how much longer you’ve got.  I’m not trying to send you into a panic, truly.  I want you to hold your exquisite, gorgeous life in your trembling hands.  Can you see, really see, how beautiful and precious it is?  Can you surrender to your own ferocious passion for your own life?

These questions are as much for me as for you, of course.  I will show you my own love, as much as I can.

I love language.  I love poetry, and song, and spinning in a rapture of phonemes and nuance and expression, reading it, listening, writing, singing.  It makes me high.  It’s the art of relating, the art of declaring I have these elaborate thoughts and textured emotions, and I want you to see, I want you to feel, I want to bring you with me.  Come with me!  Is it that, at root, all art, all expression is tapping into this universal fount, this underground aquifer of flourish, such that we can recognize our lack of separation?

I love the garden.  My garden, the community garden, the gardens I stumble upon, am invited into, slices of Eden scattered all around.  The soil, the worms, the tender seedlings, the vigorous vines, the lush fruiting, the quenching with rain, the attunement to seasonal rhythm, the excitement of new knowledge, the sensuality of raspberries, the swelling of zucchini, the majesty of leaf and flower.  It feeds every part of me, and allows me to feed my beloveds, literal nourishment of bodies and souls.

I love people.  I love their laughter as we sit by the bonfire.  I love their stories.  I love their embodiment, their youth, their age, their dazzling beauty (which is vastly more widespread than the cultural norms would have you believe), their shyness, their boldness, their art, their way of ever-blooming if you take the time to see.  They are so imperfect, so human, so full of feeling, so brilliant.  There is a lover in each person, no matter how shut down or closed off, and seeing that lover in their eyes or words or images brings me the most insane delight.

There is more, of course.  There is always more.

Let’s quaff this potent brew, shall we?  Now.  Right now.

I’m 41 years old today.  This latest revolution around the sun, this past year, has been revolutionary indeed for me.

How do I want to remember it?  What parts do I want to hold up and marvel at, shudder at, cherish?  The truth is that every part is likely worthy of marvel, shuddering, and cherishing.  It was a year unlike any other, brimming with contemplation, creative outbursts, lightning bolts of insight, many moments of shattering and heartbreak, examining priorities, grappling with mortality, shimmering with love.  It was a year threaded with white-hot filaments, flaring up day and night, burning away the dross, scorching my skin.

I’m older now, and younger, too.  I’m shedding the deadly seriousness, more and more, in favor of playing with wild abandon, immersing myself in mirthful verse and storytelling, glorying in the most basic elements of joy: sun, rain, touch, laughter, listening, singing, running, receiving wave upon wave of beauty gobsmacking me between the eyes.  It doesn’t erase reality, of course, worlds of suffering and injustice, but this is the soft and musical voice that speaks to me about that:

It’s time to set down the fear and anguish.  The world is still full of that fear and anguish; if you need it, you can claim it again, since it’s not going anywhere.  But you have well and fully explored that landscape of pain.  There will always be a million reasons to feel such pain.  Remember, always: your days are numbered, and this is a joy.  You can choose to freeze up in the face of sensuous Life, or to pull Life towards you by the shoulders, to place your hands on the warm and smiling face of Life, to kiss Life with exquisite and tender and undeniable passion, allowing your lips, your words, your breath to be a conduit for the electric pulse of universal love.  You can lean back and hear Life whisper in your ear:  I’ve got a miracle for you, you shining beauty.  Go on.  Take it.

low, sonorous sound,
thrumming marine thunder,
undulating through seawater

humpback whale song
in complex phrases,
elaborate themes,
repeating
for days

thousands of miles
the moans travel,
low-frequency waves
of unremitting desire

summoning love
from the ends of the earth

the ocean is not large enough
to contain this urgency,
this pelagic rapture.

 

You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?
You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to?
You may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong?
You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?
~ “Once in a Lifetime,” Talking Heads

And after asking yourself all that, perhaps you conclude that you don’t know.  You profoundly do not know, in a way that shocks you with its gravity.  You don’t have an iota of an answer.  The questioning left you untethered and bobbing on the waves, pummeled by winds and tides, holding your head in your hands, wondering if there would be an Answer, blindly groping towards anything solid, please, anything but the implacable, liquid sea.

You could easily bob around in that way until your last breath.  It’s been done.  It’s as worthy a way as any to experience life.

You may ask yourself, though, what if I give up on those answers?  You may ask yourself, how about I take another breath?  You may ask yourself, do I really have anything to lose?  You may ask yourself, when did I start believing I had any control?  You may ask yourself, who taught me to be so serious?

There’s still a sea, you’re still blind, you don’t know shit, and you float on your back, laughing so hard you keep losing your balance and go thrashing into the water, laughing harder now, there’s nothing to hold onto, nothing, and this strikes you as outrageously funny.  Laughter percolates from your toes to the ends of your hair, bubbling through you unstoppably.  You feel a joyous surrender; your limbs have unclenched; everything is just the same, but you are not.  You are ready to laugh until you cry and beyond, until the tears have swirled irrevocably into the vast aquamarine.

Wet as an otter, you are, ready to play in the big, glinting sea.

 

A chronicle of shame is not a shame,
though culture and my ego disagree;
it’s easy finding self-bound faults to blame
and harder to relax against the tree.

It’s been a challenging few days in the unconditional-positive-regard department, at least in terms of practicing it towards myself.  This is my response, then: to chronicle the shame, release some of those hot tears in “reality” and here in the “ether,” examine events and feelings with a good measure of integrity and kindness, and let go into the certainty of healing, no matter the pace.

I went running today.  I haven’t gone running in at least a year.  I had run out of excuses, now that Lily knows how to ride her bike.  I don’t have to find someone to spend time with her while I go running (which feels like a significantly more arduous task than the running itself); instead, I can just chase her down the bike path.  Today was a splendid, warm day; Lily was eager to ride; and I put on my clothes and shoes and out we went.

The good news is that I didn’t have a panic attack, we went further than I thought we might, Lily is a great companion for such an endeavor, and I think I pushed myself pretty hard but not so hard that I would wreck my chances of attempting it again anytime soon.

Harder were the parts about feeling intense body shame, the fear of being seen and judged, the dread of all the work ahead of me if I truly want to experience a shift in my physical sense of myself.  It’s hard to hold it at bay while panting, sweating, getting a blister, and monitoring for signs of overwhelming anxiety.

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, after all that, to go clothes shopping at Savers.  But we had planned the excursion ahead of time, with a friend.  I’m not a fan of clothes shopping, or shopping in general, but shopping for clothes feels especially difficult.  There we were, at Savers, with Lily swinging from the racks and getting the hairy eyeball from other shoppers, me trying to remember if Lily had outgrown most of her pants, and also attempting to track down a few shirts and shorts for myself, all the while feeling overwhelmed by the rows and rows of merchandise and wanting to flee.  (I have fled such settings before, but we had come a fair distance, and had our friend with us, and it didn’t seem like a real option.)  And then we were in the teeny-tiny, claustrophobia-inducing dressing room, under the fluorescent lights, with the full-length mirror, and I had forgotten how stunningly awful that experience is.  I started to cry while Lily played with fallen price tags and plastic hangers on the floor.  It was all I could do to not surrender to bawling, but there was my beloved girl, and I don’t want her to think that getting undressed in front of a mirror should have to involve tears of shame.  She was sufficiently distracted, I think, and I was sufficiently muted that I don’t think it registered for her very much.

It’s also tied, it seems, to my roiling thoughts about a young Tunisian woman named Amina who posted a topless photo of herself with words written on her torso that said, “My body belongs to me and is not the source of anyone’s honour.”  She was threatened with being stoned to death, and was reportedly forcibly hospitalized by her family, drugged, and beaten.  In response, there was a collective outcry from many locations around the world with women baring their breasts and writing messages of support (photos of these various efforts are included at the link above).  I had seriously considered joining them, but ultimately decided not to; either way, the prospect of joining or not joining has been a torment, and part of it is about my own body shame, and part of it is about my rage that such shame should ever exist, and even more, my rage that women are daily subjected to such appalling constraint and violence, from physical acts such as stoning or rape to the cultural/emotional influences that lead women to hate their own bodies and monitor themselves vigilantly, sapping energy away from more fruitful pursuits.

Now that I’ve opened that release valve a bit, it’s time for me to lean against the tree and breathe.  A memory from this morning rises up: Lily came to snuggle me in my bed, and said, “You’re the best, warmest, softest mama in the whole world.”  Such sweetness and love.  She doesn’t see me the way I see myself.  Probably no one sees me quite so harshly as I see myself.  And this “I” who’s seeing, pummeled and distorted by a hundred thousand stories, I’ll be gentle to her.