Breaking

Just after I turned 30 my life completely fell to pieces, and in its falling it stuck like glue to new positions and angles, completely unexpected designs and sharp edges. Leaning through the new pathways created by this restructuring I found myself being sliced deeply, bleeding from my center, thick pools of life force flowing live a river out of me. The shell left behind stares blankly at me now. I flick at her face. "Wake Up!" I want to scream, and a horse dryness holds the words on the other side of my disembodied self. The force of the scream reverberates through the alien structure I now inhabit. I try, without success, to peal away the layers. I scrape at the eyelids that give this version of vision. Cranking my head side to side, I try to make it rotate in all directions, it is encumbered by a few singular views. Pointless. It could be said it happened cause of a baby, or a boy, and then maybe a baby. Again. None of the answers are complete. They are all just part of this tumbling of artifice, this making of nothing out of all the things that I could have made, why this? I inhale now deeply. I feel the holes in my face working as they are meant to and color seems to seep back in. But even as it fills me I bleed. Draining out empty. I am a sandcastle. No sooner do I build up, then an inevitable wave crashes me down. Around me I try desperately to create a barricade. Still I have started too close to the shore. Too close to the waves. I think of a new lover. Her hair is a mixture of toffee and cocoa. She smiles wryly at all times and she moves into me. "Be the River, not the Rock." she says. The river is so hard to break, made of water, not glass.

I Didn't Mean for it to be this Way

The blog I mean. Not at all. I had high aspirations for a themed blog about always looking for the progressive path (s). Not from a frame of mutual exclusivity, but from a place of inclusivity of multiple paths. Instead, for the most part, times like now included I come here to wallow through writing, to process some angst, to describe a confusion that is the worst malaise of action. I feel paralyzed. All this learning and connecting and knowing where to move towards, but always the feeling I have gotten nowhere, have not been quite understood, will not be able to even make a dent in this issue. I told a mentor I admire the other day, when he inquired as to how I was doing, that I was breaking under the weight of the issue, that I felt the whole cause on my back, and I was not doing it justice. Later, I was shocked I had admitted this to this person, on whose impression of me rests much potential for my career. More shocked though by his empathetic and understanding response, "You can't do that to yourself, you have to just do your best and know it is everything you are able to do and accept that as enough." This is why I have identified him as a true mentor I suppose, because he gets me and relates to how work. But I cannot accept his advice. Even as I sit here paralyzed, knowing that today I am not doing my best, not doing enough. Knowing that today I have retreated and am trying to go deeper into hiding. "Illusions of Grandeur." That phrase keeps coming to my head when I get this way about the work. Who do I think I am in anyways? In what world is this burden really mine? Why have I constructed my work as so important? People I love are living perfectly happy lives by doing normal work and leaving it at work and spending time with their families keeping the house and building gardens and offering community service. I am running around like a manic doomsdayer trying to get people to wake up to a crisis that I myself have not fully acknowledged. Every time I run the water scalding hot so I can feel the ache subside from my joints as it burns my hands while I scrub dishes I feel the guilt of the energy being used to heat the water. I see the flame light and its connection to the natural gas peaking plant, the hydrodams, the coal emitting plants. But I still run the water hot, thinking this may be the last year I have the privilege to do so. And I know my greatest handicap is my attitude towards the work, the guilt, the panic, even the passion. I know that if I could center and believe and operate not from a place of shame but steadfast optimism that I would not be so afraid, and then the work would be more effective. But I am just so afraid still. Instead of choosing a path, I am running up and down all the paths I can think of. When I am sick, or hurt, or tired I hide, disoriented. Which WAY??!! All I know is that it cannot be this way.

“I would rather die than live in fear” -MLK

-Quoted from Alice Walker’s The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart

I came to understand this quote most completely when I watched "White Light, Black Rain" in commemoration of Nuclear Free Future Month through a documentary about the horrors of the the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombs. I watched the film twice, once at home late sick with the flu, close to my computer screen. The second time I was projecting the image for a group, pulling out themes and facilitating discussion. People's mothers were vaporized, babies lost heads, homes were incinerated. 220,00. They woke up and were living there lives and then they were literally radiated, deeply. A pillar of fire, describes one witness. Not a mushroom cloud. And one of the hibakusha (survivors of the atomic bomb) lost her whole family except here sister and then her sister killed herself and the only surviving one says, "there are two kinds of courage, the courage to live and the courage to die." I would never have aligned with that claim in the past, not ever seeing a justification for taking your life, or accepting death. And now I see what was meant, what is meant. The bomb makes me so, so, so , sad.

Why are all the girls in New York City Oh, Oh, Oh So Pretty?

I really asked myself that several times on my latest journey into the city. I had the good fortune to experience a night in the cities, through the city, in the village. All because I had the foresight, when a flight got canceled to realize that with the same connection it was better to start early in New York then to arrive late in Chicago. I traveled on the subway from Queens and a free stay at a hotel near La Guardia, traveled into the Village and to my favorite restaurant "The Caravan of Dreams." Ahhhh, a dream come true it was. But really, the girls in New York City are sooooo pretty. From blondes with golden almond skin and smiles full of sunshine, to remarkably sophisticated beauties of all hues and styles of all scents and mental kinds. It's nice they are are all so pretty, all them girls in New York City.

Marrying the Movement

Today I considered the notion that really, to do my work I would have to marry the movement. It seems that is the only relation, besides my children, that I have time for and that I can experience without distrust, doubt and all the other anxieties there are in human to human relations. It certainly is my passion, it certainly feeds my soul and invigorates my senses, pushes me to be better and keeps me going when I'm down. It gives me a sense of commitment and purpose and I trust it to be there, since the cause is lasting the relation too is sure to be prolonged. It can't put its arms around me though. It does not wipe tears from my eyes, or touch me gently to show its affection. It doesn't listen, really to my fears and offer advice and it won't playfully explore with me in material ways. That's o.k. maybe. The movement hurts though. It makes me tired and scared and overwhelmed and sometimes I feel like I want to run and hide from it. Bury myself in a green thicket of vegetation, just breathe in moss and feel the wetness of the ground. But that is not the movement, that is me seeking alone time with the reason for the movement the protections of the earth and its growings. Today, when I heard activists of the 70's talking about their actions I was so overwhelmed with that sense that I was now in a relation and it was so intense and wonderful, but besides those with me in this movement, for now at least. I have to wrap my own arms around myself. Pat myself gently on the back, and talk myself to sleep into sweet dreams. For now, that seems like it is the challenge I face in coming into the power to not relate to the movement but to be it.

Cutting Deeper

One time, I was cutting a loaf of Rye bread. I think it was late November and the rye taste satisfied a need for warmth and comfort. The loaf was not particularly hard, but maybe a little tough. Somehow my left hand, the hand securing the bread in place, came too close to the blade. I cut deeply into my left pointer finger. We wrapped the pointer in paper towel, and as is typical in a metropolitan area, we simply walked to the nearest hospital. We waited for a long time and I eventually waited alone, as the baby needed to go home. When the doctor did come we had a lovely exchange, where I shared my fascination with bodily wounds and he shared medical school experiences. He got a kick of the way I watched intently as he stitched up my now bloated finger (from the pain injection). "That is so cool" I kept saying "Its like I'm made of wax." I couldn't get over the way my flesh was open and he was threading through it and I couldn't feel a thing. I remember riding my bike to the store for beer later. Talking on my cell-phone with my good hand, steering with my poor hand. Three Monkeys, a great beer with an over-the-top alcohol content that accompanied my grad school days perfectly. It was the first night of River "crying it out." This was a technique that never did work for him. But I sat and drank beer and read Foucault, with earphones on and a bandaged left hand. Tonight, River cut his hand while reaching up on an outdoor shelf. He screamed for what seemed like forever. The cut was superficial and I wanted him to just breathe. But he continued to scream, and scream. I couldn't help but wonder if he was really screaming about the cut or some other, more internal wound. "I almost cut my finger off once" I told him. "Want to see the scar?" "It healed just fine." "When was that mommy, where was I?" "In Philly, and you were a baby, and I was cutting a loaf of rye bread..."

Me Moving Through

I have been away for a bit. Not even having written a post in August is weird for me, considering it is the 7th already. I traveled to Portland for some progressive inspirations (I swear, they are like a different species in Portland, everyone is so hip and healthy and there are 2 raw food restaurants!) I also had a chance to catch up with my fellow dear "L" ladies Laura (who I call Lar Lar) and Leila (my sweet Lippy Lippy Leila Lu...we say "Hi Lippy!" "Oh, Hi Lippy!!" when we talk. Being with soul sister gals who I trust and know love me no matter what cause they have seen me at my best and worst and still stuck around was exactly what I needed--a total blessing. I missed the boys terribly, I have been away far too much, but I tried to savor the solaness and let myself grow. It was good. Last night we commemorated the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Through photos of the bomb and its effects we made the space for recognition of the atrocities. Through Japanese music on the Kyoto, a presentation of a plaque from the Mayor of Hiroshima, and a survivor story we honored the culture and the human bodies impacted by this past violent act. Then, a dear and lovely woman helped us move past the past to a place of peace and transformation as we meditated together about peace spreading to the world. I actually felt something radical in me shift in that moment and the feeling has been lasting. It all came full circle through the dances of peace we participated in at the end. Weaving our bodies between each other, looking each other in the eyes and singing lovely words the entire process moved from a cerebral remembrance to an embodied acknowledgment and wholistic transformation. This weekend I have my boys in the mountains again. I leave for a period next week. I remembered last night that even when I am away we are connected.