Acceptance

I am tall and slender like my father. I look a little like my mother. Though my face will never be as soft. One might say I am pretty. People take pride is such silly things. Don't they? As if we do all the work. But I didn't mold my cheekbones, chin, and nose while floating in utero. I did not decide on the wave and color of my hair, nor the blueish brown irises of my eyes. I never selected my hip width or the length of my legs. Sure, I want this body to move me and work, to climb mountains, run, garden, lift children, dance and write. I want to feel good and strong and so I eat well and work. I dance and play. Therefore, this form is strong and healthy and for that, I am grateful and I am happy. Certainly, it will not be strong and healthy for all eternity. For this body is entirely temporary. Still, I try not to give in to common earthly worry. Instead, I try to let whatever is, be.

I look older because I am older. This is obvious. This is acceptance. Luckily, I've never leaned too heavily on my hair color or my face or figure. When I was younger, I tried (leaning on my looks), but I just, sort of, fell over. So I no longer look too longingly into any mirror. This is the soft fragile shell I wear. That's all. One made for me by other bodies and by the great soul of all souls. Surely, I am curious about it, curious about time and age. I find my white hair, wrinkles, and wisdom most interesting.

Last year, I bought myself a pink t-shirt with the word MOTHER printed in large red letters across the front. At the time, it seemed like a powerful purchase, like a public naming. However, I've hardly worn it. For it feels like a bumper sticker on my chest. THIS IS ME! It screams. Yet, I don't want to be defined by any label. Labels just become judgments and assumptions. A simplified effort to name oneself, know oneself. As if I could ever be the abstract image of a word anyway. As if we were all our bodies or our roles and not a chaotic blended bit of the universe.

We try. We write lists, labels, profiles, roles, and words around ourselves...
I am this
I do this
I live here
I traveled there
I wear this
I have this
I was this
I am this

Words cannot define me. Not really. Though this doesn't keep me from trying. I love language. And I love all that it fails to do. For then there is only living.  I am living. And I am learning. Learning not to label. I am not what I do or the places I go to. I am not the linen, cotton, and leather I wear. I am not my brown and white wavy hair. I am not my moles, my freckles, my legs, my hips, my lips, my fingers, my feet. I am not what I have. (Again, I say.) I am not what I have. I am nothing and I am everything. An abstraction in body, traveling.

Hurry and Surrender

I once allowed my mind to push us through time. 

Wake up!

To the toilet!

To the dresser!

To the table!

Cereal? Toast? Juice? Water?

Here are your boots... your coat! I've got your bag!

To the car!

To school...

I Park. 

We walk. 

Good-bye! 

Love you!

[SCHOOL]

Hello! 

Let's go! 

To the car! 

Get in the carseat. 

Please. Climb. Up.

And we’re in the car. 

To the house!

Ahhh. Home. 

Wash your hands.

Come to the table!

Your bath is ready!

Open your mouth - time to brush!

Put on your pajamas. 

Get into bed!

Books.

It's late. 

Lights out. 

It is time to sleep! 

Go to sleep. 

Sh sh sh! 

She is three years old.

You cannot hurry her into the car or she wanders into the parking lot weeds or the woods. You cannot hurry her into the bath or she dances away. And you certainly cannot hurry her to sleep. Sleep comes soon or sleep comes slow, and lately, on account of her napping at school, sleep comes slow.

She is not yet sleepy at 7:30. 

So with that truth, I surrender. And so we read books a little longer and she falls asleep a little later.

Every moment is meant for me. Even in these seemingly tedious times of transition. Even while waiting, weeping, and cleaning. Every moment is meant for me. Just as this child is meant for me. Already, at three, she is my wisest teacher. She is a master of the moment, and of play and spontaneity. I want to land on every moment the way she does, with such curiosity, confidence, and creativity.

As the adult, I am the doer and the time keeper. This all has its place. However, I don't want to hurry her when I don’t need to. Hurry becomes worry. And what is worry but a wrecking ball in the body, putting me into an angry, clumsy frenzy? I don't want that for her and I don't want that for me. And so I surrender. Stress never stalls time anyway. Instead, with this small person, stress stretches time into long fits of strife and struggle. Therefore, I surrender. 

Yes, clear boundaries. 

Yes, routine. 

And yes too to her whims, wants, and needs.

Yes to empathy. 

When I must wake her now, I try not to speak. Instead, I play sweet, soft songs, songs without drums or cymbals or horns, - just voices, and strings.

I set down the speaker in the dark...

slumber

song

arm

eyes open

blink

sit

stretch

rise 

dress

pee 

soap & water

food

breathe 

quiet drive

park 

carry 

walk 

goodbye, love 

[school]

hello

car

home

play 

hands 

supper

play 

bathing 

brushing 

bed

books 

and books 

and books

and snuggle

and slumber

[It isn't always this small and slow and quiet, but this soft flow is the goal.]  

Air

If I sit very still, I can feel my heartbeat as it rocks the top of my body.

It just does that.

Eckhart Tolle wrote that we are more air than atom. It has been proven.

I am more air than atom, more SPACE than skin, bone, and organ. I must remember this next time I fall on my thoughts, myself, or the earth.

We are more air than atom. What a beautiful idea.

One day, I hope to float - to rise above the little stuff and ride the current of universal consciousness.

Murder

In the woods, the boy finds a fallen branch. Holds it up. A little later, I watch while he lies across a wide circular swing on his soft belly, pointing the stick at the other wide circular swing, where three three-year-olds, one born of me, sit, smiling and swinging. He looks like a mass shooter in a custodian's closet, machine gun on shoulder, mouth ruffling his tongue and lips to sound like the rounds of rapid-fire bullets burning through air and bone. He is probably between 12 and 14 years old.

I stare at him. He doesn't notice. I look to the women talking over him, the women with him, but they do not notice. I then move to stand between the boy and the girls, with the center of my back blocking his ignorant play. I sense him adjusting, stretching around me. The girls notice. They make the machine gun sounds with their own mouths, while still smiling and swinging. They do not understand. Bless them.

Inside my body and brain, judgment, anger and sadness rise.
Columbine.
Newtown.
The Boston Marathon.
Parkland.
The Pulse Nightclub.
Santa Fe High School.
Las Vegas.
Virginia Tech.
Mass shootings to list and list and list.
And all of this just makes me wonder. Why do we entertain ourselves with murder?

I have seen the video game where the player murders monsters. The player is then given gold and the glory of victory. Then there are the movies where the heroes murder monsters with explosives, fire, swords, and bullets. King Kong. Stormtroopers. Orcs. Death Eaters. Dinosaurs. There are the television shows where the accused are shot in the back by the good guys, the vigilante judges, juries and executioners. There are the television shows where the unkind kings are killed by poisonous wine. Then there are the films where zombies and great white sharks and enemy armies are cut to pieces.

This is our entertainment, watching bad guys bleed, choke, wheeze, fall, and die.

What do the good guys do to the bad guys? The good guys (with confidence, fast cars, muscles, sexy wardrobes and weapons, epic soundtracks, and impossibly impressive targeting) chauffeur the seamless endings again and again and again. Yet, when we walk out into the bright light of real life, people are complicated, flawed as they fumble and bumble and stumble through time.

We see it in the news. Someone makes someone else into a monster, a monster to be murdered.

We entertain ourselves with the over-simplified hate of separateness. Good and Evil. And then we walk around the world of grays and rainbows, of dirt, sea, sky, skin, and egos, of weapons, of kitchen knives, chemicals, cars, machine guns, and sticks, and blind to our oneness, we do harm.

I do not believe that these isolated screens where insanity screams for violence is quenching some deep human instinct or need inside of us. Inside of us, we are lit like the sun. We are one, one piece of all peace. We just need the space and silence and stillness to sit with it, see it and believe it. We need a flood of love to cool and wet the planting of lit matches throughout the dry forests of us. A flood of love to grow us up, and not burn us (and the whole good world) down to soot and ash. A flood followed by seed and sun. Give us boats, GOD. Let us float among flowers as they grow from the fire-fallow earth. Let us abandon this poison, this pain, and be young again.

Monsters

Silence is underfoot - too many thoughts trampling parades of cacophonous monsters and trash into every moment. I wish I could watch it all pass and laugh, but instead, I see everything. I don't believe everything, but I see everything. Then I am angry, and then I am angry because I am angry, which is simply, a big stupid circle of stupidity.

I have been away at this charade for most of the day, and now I am ready to go home.

"BE STILL!" I shout to all of my imagined monsters like the child from WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE by Maurice Sendak.

I want this mind to be a bare mirror, reflecting earth, soul, object, light, and color. I want to wait and watch while ideas appear like hot air balloons, breathing fire and blowing in the wind.

I sit and place a white page under pencil. Then I scribble, hoping the sight will write some of the noise away.

I will not be eaten up by my wild things.

Clatter happens, and when it does, I can always climb into my paper sailboat and float for home.

Gusts

Laughter moves through me in gusts, belly, and mouth, sudden and deep. This is bliss, I believe.

We are the same. You are there on your journey. I am here on mine. We are separated, but only by skin and air and time.

I am a cloud floating inside the container of an animal, and I am expanding, seeping into the soil and sky. I want to be the laughter that moves through me in gusts. I want to be the wind, the leaf, the sea, the swallows, the sky.

Worry

I am allowing the worry to abandon me now, letting it leave me like sweat and tears.

Why, I ask myself, revive old rancid regret? Why write out old ugly worry into word and story? Why drag up nets of jagged metal, splintered junk, and wreckage onto the deck of my being?  Why, when I can just release it? I release it now. And when it rises again, I look at it, then I release it like fish, like flies, like flocks of caged birds. For worry is tight and heavy and fierce. I don't want this wild thing. It clots and rots my body. Severs me from soul.

I only ever want to be here. And I only ever want to be a life that is light and clean. I want to sweep out the dirt, guts, and dust of unwanted thoughts. I want to seek and settle into silence, float within stillness.

I once wore worry like a gold medal. Look at me! Look at all the worry I have! - worry for others, worry for the world, worry for myself! Goodness, I must be good for I feel so horrible about so many things! I would write congested paragraphs of the stuff, scribbled page after scribbled page, then I would open my mouth and spew my fury and fear. I thought worry made me a better person. That it was proof of my awareness of all the suffering, - my suffering, your suffering, the suffering of every suffering stranger.  I believed that worry made me and the world better. But what has my worry ever really made (aside from a false means of activity)? I'm not sure it has done much of anything. For my worry rarely dissolved and evolved into action, which certainly would have been worth my attention.  Instead, my worry formed a wind storm inside me.

Now I let it blow through me.

I once had a water wheel for a heart, a thrashing thump thump THUMP of wood against water. Now, inside me, there is a leaf on a stream, gliding gently gently gently, paper between water and air.

I am allowing the worry to abandon me now,

and good GOD it feels good.