The wisdom of rainbow hair.

I had long gorgeous locks once upon a time... Wavy, luscious chocolate brown with hints of red and sun kissed flecks of gold. The wispy ends of it grazed the back pockets on my blue jeans... It caught eyes and turned heads. But underneath the head of hair... The pretty face. The compliments that followed me around.... I was broken in a million pieces from the neck down... Filled with fear and self loathing.... ugliness from the inside out.

After the years of self-perpetuating abusive relationships... After I gave birth to a beautiful fatherless boy. I hit rock bottom. I couldn't conceive of ever again inviting a man into my heart or bed... I could see no value that I had to offer at all. I could see nothing at all in my mirror to smile about. Except my gorgeous wavy hair.

I stopped brushing it for two years in an attempt to shun my vanity. To hide from the gazes of men. My Nanu loved me dearly, but despised my dreadlocks. Everytime I went to visit he would ask when I was going to cut the pile of poop off my head. When my Nanu died, to honor him I spent the day before I was to give his eulogy sitting in a chair, while my mother and sister and a large bottle of conditioner tried to salvage a precious few inches of my dignity. The short inches left curled in perfect, adorable spirals around my features. Each and every hug to comfort me the day I sent my Nanu off to the heavens was accompanied by a ten minute conversation about how much better my hair looked now... Ny head felt lighter... But my heart was as heavy and tangled as the masses of twisted and gnarled hair I had cut from it.

When my son was three I handed him a pair of scissors and let him hack off most of those few ringleted inches. I wore his ragged, punky handy-work for three days before I borrowed a pair of animal clippers from a farmer friend and, with the help of an Orange BIC, I freed myself of the last bits of that auburn beauty I could not own. In the two years my head was simple and clean I learned what it feels like to have the rain tickle my scalp and that sunburn on my shiny dome is not fun. I learned that my head could be an amazingly sensual place and that forehead massages can result in something that could almost be described as an orgasm. I learned that without the distraction of hair, completely independent of what had once been my greatest beauty, I was still radiant and sexy. That while I had expected to repulse them, now these amazing men saw just as much beauty and now noticed and noted the kindness in my eyes, the feistiness in my walk, and the full sensual shape of my lips. I discovered, more importantly, that my desirability was not only found in my physical features.

I found that when I had no curtains to hide my face behind that I had to stand and be seen. In the face of jeers and stares, snap judgements about my values and my sexual preferences, I had to be stronger than I knew I could be. I climbed over walls and jumped through fire without fear of being caught by nails or sparks. Pushed through briar bushes and crawled under barbed wire without snags or snarls. Some of the most inspiring (and unexpected) moments were finding connections to women who had lost their hair to the ravages of things beyond their control. Though for many of them, their lesson came with a medical cancer diagnosis, mine had come from a cancer of the soul... I realized that my hairless scalp was as much a part of my cure as theirs was. I found a kinship with these amazing survivors that I may have never noticed, were it not for the beacons of each of our bald heads, glowing in the sunlight. A silent testimony to our trials and triumphs.



It's been nearly four years since I last felt a razorblade glide across my scalp... When I stand naked my hair tickles the bottom of my rib cage... It is still mostly a chocolate brown but now my glowing heart is painted into it. My artist hands smudge and smear streaks of purples and turquoise... Blues and green dye... Bits of pink stand out in the sunshine. It's as if every strand on my head is radiantly skipping and cartwheeling... My multicolored hair is, not an act of rebellion, but of shouting for joy, that I am alive to wear this glorious crown! I won't always wear a rainbow on my head... Nature will take my head back from the bottles of blue... The brown I was born with will hopefully someday give way to grey and I will wear each stage as gracefully as my soul allows. But for the first time in my life, at thirty-four years old I know that the waves of beauty cascading around my face are owned. When I walk by a mirror I SEE an accurate reflection of the beautiful woman I finally know that I am on the inside. When a strand blows across my face I greet it lovingly as a part of me. I feel delight (delicious even!) as I brush silky strands out of my eyes.... I could take it off again tomorrow... I have no need of it, I am me and I am beautiful from the inside out with or without these locks, and painted colors or not. It's a silly and frivolous thing, really... But I am grateful that I have been given such a gift to wear for my years on this earth. To decorate and wrap the treasure of my heart with. A loved one recently noted how much my hair has grown out... The irony makes me smile... It is not my hair that has grown, it is I who have finally grown into my hair.






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Location:Inspired by reflections in a pond

Bedroom Eyes

Aren't you tired?

my love...

of peering down from those turrets of stone?

safe.

But alone...



Aren't you weary?

peasants and lambs...

strutting peacocks brilliantly boastful.

boiling oil at the ready...

arrows that could split hair.

aren't you tired of quiet discontent

but not defiance or dissent?



aren't you tired of fear?

of not touching, but gazing at your beloved.

at all the would-be beloveds

from holes chipped in six inches of plaster

vision impaired by the fibers of poorly woven bandages?



aren't you drained by always being right?

held tight in the center of that globe

watching the rest of us

merely particles swirling about,

decorating your space?



aren't you wasted from pouring your feelings in a bottle

cabinets overflowing with cold, sealed glass.

of telling those same stories

over and over? the same film replaying in every matinée in your mind...

the taste of only those words on your tongue

the sounds familiar (too familiar?) on your lips?



aren't you bored of projects? Projection instead of connection?

text instead of touch

art as only an expression of loss...

buried sorrow.

wrapped in humiliation.

instead of joy mixed with those tears.

celebration and adoration!



aren't you exhausted from running

throwing caution into the wind without a care for the hearts in your hands?

the chaos you return to when that pack grows too heavy?



aren't you spent from the same blank checks... the judgmental eyes

overtaxed by the unnecessary tears?

whispered voices of reason hoarse

stuck on repeat all these years?



aren't you distressed by those ropes loosely holding you?

and can't you see there is no knot?



who would you be

were there no need

for feeling the rails on your back

screeches perpetually lodged in your throat

is it a charming rescue you endlessly await?

or release under the wheel of Casey Jones?



aren't you worn from clinging?

to that pacifier

...soiled stuffed toy

faded and torn blanket

so safe and secure?



aren't you weary of being fed by a newsfeed

facing a wall instead of faces?

voices lost in endless space?

speaking and preaching into an abyss

caught in a web

connected, but stuck...

lethargically awaiting death.



aren't you fed up with stuffing your face and padding your heart with fast foods

a disposable man in a disposable world?

wrapped in rejection,

smothered in self depreciation,

lathered in bacon fat?

resigning to dull moods.

sex as pornographic crude.

the world done me wrong

the blues tuning in every song...



getting off and merely taking.

no chance of being crushed...

or breaking..

half heartedly faking...

a poor match for opening up... letting in.

for love making...



aren't you fatigued from channel surfing instead of riding waves of ecstasy?

gazing out across beverly hills instead of breathing in mountain tops?



substituting ritual and routine for exploration of the spaces in between?

applying only rigid method to seeking evidence of the unseen

dismissing the magic of all this wondrous universe.

self-righteous disbelief in mystery... how time flies....

don't you miss the awe and tiny miracles of your childhood eyes?



aren't you tired of clean hairless sofas instead of warm purring laps?

dry faces instead of loving kisses?



aren't you sick of the cure?

done swallowing mouthfuls of bullshit?

capsules to rid you of all these pesky emotions?



aren't you tired of settling for less than

pulse racing, heart soaring, soul growing, mind expanding, sweat dripping, body merging...melting, blissful touching...

reaching for SOMETHING?



aren't you run down from always being the chaser... never chased?

or was it vice versa...



movie screens? same old scenes...

heartless machines...

missing dreams.

steady monochrome stream...

aren't you tired of lies?

head in a fog?

sleep in your eyes?

a life lived painless? effortless...... stainless.

but loveless?



we are more than our patterns... more than our slumbers



in a world so uninspired.

my love... aren't you tired?

A Wondering Wanderer.

1:30 A.M.
another sleepless night.
I wonder many things about who I am...
always.
tonight I wonder who I am to you.
I need no labels, no names, nothing really...
friendship is a blessings in and of itself
but I wonder all the same
if my confusion is mine alone or if you bear the same burden?
I wonder what you think when I cross your mind.
I wonder what you thought when first your eyes touched mine many moons ago...
I wonder if the same warmness, kindness, and unbelievable strength radiated from my eyes.
I wonder if your poetic heart sang one quick but beautiful note as it did when you met that girl who loved you and cut you so many worlds away from today... perhaps not, as I fear...
Or perhaps you'd forgotten how to hear?
I wonder if the same hint of unsureness that comes from hurts buried deep and wounds left unhealed by another's kisses also whispered quietly in my shy sweet smile.
I wonder if you noticed my quiet confidence waver for just a moment?
I saw yours... even from across the road.
I wonder if you look forward to those momentary glimpses of my face, my world, as I do yours.
If you smile and flutter at those dozens of little bells that chime most days with my name on them as you go about your life, and I mine.
I wonder if you also think I am more lovely and wonderful each passing day... even with the imperfect spots... the blotches, the bricks and stones, sticks and bones,
the cracks and tears, the misplaced fears...
I wonder if you were available... if I would have botched things terribly already, as I'm convinced I have so many times before when I let lurking insecurities beat me over the head and drag me back to their dark caves...
I wonder if you ever will allow yourself... or me... that possibility?
or if its more than just a security blanket you sleep beneath...a functional facade.
is it socially obligated arms length... are there stronger chains?
is this glass between us the window of your home?
your bedroom mirror?
a bell jar around your heart?
or my rose-colored glasses?
I don't want to own you OR owe you...
but I'd really like to KNOW you.
and I wonder if I'm brave enough to even show you...
to let you see...
all these fragile and twisty turvy parts of me
I wonder if I know how to be anything but alone
I have had only me to walk beside for so long...
and yet HERE it is... despite my pain, my fear, my shame .... I am open.
Here are my veins... do we bleed just the same?
Am I worthy of your heart... your art or flow charts?
I am here.... in the dark... staring at a screen. Where are you?
I laugh out loud to sooth my nerves, because maybe I shouldn't.... but sometimes I can't help myself... I wonder what your arms would feel like around me... if your hands are strong from caressing those strings... what your skin would feel like under my fingertips... and what it would be like to whisper "goodnight" in your ear with my lips... instead of my tired thumbs.
I wonder how long I will let myself wonder before I wander on my way...
and I wonder if you would even care if I did...

An open letter to the Rapist who claimed my virginity.

Dear Brian
I typed your name into the Facebook search box tonight on a whim. I had done it before one other time, years ago. I vaguely remember seeing your blurred smiling face in a baseball cap, and the feeling of disgust that suddenly welled up in the pit of my stomach, I had to click away. This time was different though, perhaps I have grown softer over the years since then and now… and I have surely grown softer in the years since you stole my innocence in the house that “Merch” built. This time instead of just your smiling face that made me want to punch the SCREEN until it shattered into a million pieces, there was two small, beautiful, golden haired, smiles in pink dresses on each side of your dimples... And your smile… was so happy… so radiant with joy sitting there between those two tiny angels, that instead of disgust… instead of rage… the only thing that welled up in me was an overwhelming feeling of joy in my throat for you… and in that instant... just like that, forgiveness happened.
 
Fifteen years ago you wanted to pretend that next morning that nothing had happened, and I went right along with you out of shame. I made believe while working and selling right along side of you for weeks afterward that nothing had happened. To the few I told, I made believe that we had made love. That I had finally been “made love” to. You pretended nothing had happened to everyone, after all, you were my team-leader and dating each other was inappropriate, as you had been telling me after every time we had kissed up until that point. Of course the same was true after we… well, after YOU had sex with me… but then you moved on very quickly from encouraging my puppy-love crush in the moments we stole off alone together, to dating another girl who was part of your sales “team”. I’m sure I could write pages on what that did to my self esteem, but I won’t… I want to focus on the rape itself. Because YES, Brian, what you did was rape, though it took me years to call it by name.
I adored you. You knew it, our friends/coworkers knew it, our manager knew it… everyone who had eyes to see knew it. I hung on your every word… Your stories about growing up without a strong family tore at my heartstrings. Your proclamations about your beautiful home state of Wyoming being the most breathtaking place on earth… “God’s country” you’d sigh… and I believed every word. I believed in you when you said you were going to succeed, you always were a terrific salesman, and I bought your dream. You were going to work hard enough to make your wishes come true, undoubtedly, and when you said that and looked into my eyes with those beautiful brown puppy-dog eyes and kissed me... I was pretty sure (in my naivety) that you wanted me to come along with you in that dream. You see Brian, I was a young nineteen. I had only dated three guys up until that point and none for longer than a few weeks… none had gotten even as far as third base, and when it came to the male psyche, I had no clue whatsoever. I had no idea that, while I was kissing you because I was picturing wedding bells, you as a man could have shared the same deep conversations, the same passionate kiss, and still be picturing only a soft wet hole. Or maybe that isn’t that at all, maybe it’s not the male psyche ( and it’s not, But It took me years of spiraling downward in my relations with men to realize “not all men”). Maybe it was you, not that into me, but immature and unable to tell me straight up, instead of making excuses that left me still believing that our feelings were mutual. Maybe it was you, unsure of your feelings for me, and drowning the pain of your shitty childhood in one too many beers that particular night that relieved you of your self control… I say this, not to make excuses for what you did, or the pain it caused, but to find a place in my mind and my heart where I can make peace with what happened that night.
I wonder Brian, if you even remember my name. I wonder if you remember what you did, or realize the lasting effects that sort of thing can have on a person? I looked at your smiling face on my computer screen last night and I wondered if you ever look at those two beauties on either side of you and hope that they never meet a man who treats them as you treated me. I think, if I was in your shoes instead of my own all these years, that I would probably have pushed away those memories. That I probably would have come up with reasons to justify it… after all I was in your bedroom. I was cuddled up alongside of you. I did receive your kisses willingly. I dry humped you right back happily. And in all honesty, I felt so much admiration and love for you, that I did want to make love to you.  I wanted to… IF we were an actual couple, if you put had put your arm around me in the company of our friends and not just in the dark on our walks around on those city streets, if you had called me your girlfriend instead of your (one person) sales team, if you didn’t smell of beer, and caress me just a little too rough that night… Even though I was afraid of losing my virginity. Even though I was anxious that it might hurt and that a man might think less of me if I slept with him too soon in our relationship… Brian, I adored you. I’m almost sure that I would have happily and willingly given you the prize you claimed, if not that night, surely on another. The regret, the sadness, the self loathing, fear, anger, frustration, self-destructing, mistrust and hatred that your penis inside of me caused wasn’t because it was YOU I gave myself to. I wanted to give myself to you. The problem was that I DIDN’T GIVE it to you. I said “no” Brian. When you started to remove my underwear, I said “no”. When you pressed yourself against me harder, I pushed back with my hands and said “no”. When you pushed painfully into me despite the tension in my unaccustomed and unwilling vagina, I said “NO!”... And then I gave up. It was already done, you were already inside me. So I tried my best to “relax”. I tried to tell myself that since I loved you, this was "making love". I even kissed you back as you jammed your mouth just as hard and rough against my face as your pelvis was grinding into my spasming, pain-wracked hips. After you finished like a porn star, and threw me a dirty towel off the floor for my belly, I think I may have even gently stroked your back as you passed out next to me. I lay there awake most of the night replaying and getting started on rewriting our sex into something other than rape.  In the morning before you woke up, I stole quietly out of the house to go get cigarettes with one of our friends. I was ashamed and I was bruised. Our friend Tiffany was wise-cracking, indestructible, and the life of the party, I idolized the hell out of her. I wanted to cry and tell her everything, but I was embarrassed. She had had lots of sex, and she knew the extent of my crush on you. I had finally gotten to have sex with you, wasn’t that what I wanted? No… No, it wasn’t.
Brian, I could write a novel about the past fifteen years since that night when my innocence died. About all the chain reaction of pain and trauma that came from losing my virginity to rape in the hands of someone I loved and trusted. Maybe I will someday.  Today though, I write with a different purpose…. I see your smiling daughters, Brian. I see the innocence on their faces… They are so young, so eager, so absolutely enamored with their dad. And they should be, they have a wonderful father who I’m sure dotes on his princesses and adores them beyond measure. Over here, I have my sweet, gentle-hearted eight year old son sleeping next to me as the sun rises while I write this letter to you. I see these wonderful children we have each brought into the world, and I know that I must forgive you… and more than that, I must tell you out loud that I forgive you, so that maybe, just maybe, you can forgive yourself.
Perhaps you haven’t spent fifteen years playing that night out in your head from time to time, or maybe you have. Perhaps you don’t remember me or if you do, perhaps you don’t have enough of a conscience to care. Perhaps if you do think of me, you like to pretend to yourself even now that what we did was have consensual sex, I know you pretended that back then the few times we spoke of it.  Perhaps my forgiveness is not needed, and your life was not effected in any way, shape, or form by the event that so strongly shifted my own. Or maybe it did, and is effecting you. Maybe in the back of your mind you still think of yourself as a rapist when you kiss your lovely wife and tuck your smiling daughters into bed. Maybe your life has been just as tough, maybe you have caused yourself just as much (or more?) suffering. I am not a religious woman, but I believe that life is about the exchange and interplay of energies. I believe that in one way or another, you get back what you put into the world. Call it karma, or whatever you’d like, but I can’t believe that the energy that you put out that night into my life hasn’t come back to you in some way… In which case, I want to tell you this Brian: 

I forgive you, and thank you. Truly… I have no frame of reference for what my life would have been if you hadn’t laid on top of me that night, maybe it would have been grand, with less struggles, and more beauty. But I love my life exactly as it is right now. For all it’s ups and downs, I wouldn’t be who I am, where I am, and probably wouldn’t have the beautiful child sleeping next to me if it weren’t for you. I was messed up for a long time, its true. But not now… Now, I am okay… in fact, way better than okay! So, as fucked up as it is: Thank you. Tonight I released you of your debt. I smiled at your Facebook pictures ( the one of you playing guitar for your oldest hit me right in the heart)… I sobbed big heaving sobs for the naive little girl who loved you… and for a simple, sweet, sad boy from God’s country who made a big mistake. May we both raise our daughters and sons to be stronger, wiser, kinder, and with more self control than either of us had. May your children have the steady as a rock, overflowing with love childhood that you were deprived of. May we someday live in a world where rape is seen by both men and women for the horror that it is, so that my son and your daughters will never question that "NO" means "NO. May our children never know the depths of the struggles and despair we have known. I release you from my heart, from my body, and from my debt Brian. Go in peace and may you be blessed.

Death Becomes Her...

I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately… more than usual, though death has been a pretty consistent visitor to my thoughts my whole life… just as I suspect it is for most of us. Perhaps some of us choose to indulge those thoughts and some of us choose to push them away, but the thought is there regardless. I’ve done both, dwelled on, and denied those thoughts at different times throughout the years. There have been times when life was so vivid, so amazing and fruitful that I couldn’t possibly entertain any thoughts of it all coming to an end some day. There have been times where, emotionally, my situation seemed so desperate that I spent most of my waking hours contemplating wether death might be a nicer alternative to life… And I have involuntarily stared death in the eye, went a few rounds, and came out still on top (for now).

… In 2008 I contracted E. Coli 0:157: H7 from a tainted
batch of Local, Grass-Fed, Organic Raw Milk. The E.coli infection turned into a serious complication called Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome. My kidneys completely shut down and were it not for a physician’s assistant in a walk-in clinic who was fortunately paying attention…. well, lets just say: I was less than 24 hours from certain death. I spent the next month in intensive care receiving plasmapheresis, a form of dialysis where all blood is removed from your body, the plasma separated out, and then donor plasma and my blood cells were put back in. Most of the month Doctors continually told my family that there was not a very good chance that I would survive. I suffered a heart attack and a Grand Mal Seizure. I required twice as many plasma treatments as those suffering from my illness typically would need to recover. When my kidneys finally regained most of their function, and I was released, I was a bloated, scarred shell of my former self… I could barely walk, and I was taking 15-20 different medications for everything from blood pressure and cholesterol drugs, to steroids and diuretics, to anti-psychotics (for PTSD), anti-depressants, and anti-anxiety pills…

Before my illness I wouldn't even take tylenol because I didn't want to expose my body to potentially toxic laboratory chemicals... I ate all organic and natural. I was in excellent physical shape and rode my bicycle miles every day with my toddler son strapped into his child seat. After my illness, I spent the next two+ years recovering as much as I could of my physical health… I spent a few more years after that recovering my mental and emotional well-being, and I’ve spent mostly every day since then remembering (and trying to forget) what it felt like to be standing on that shaking, quivering bridge between life and death. I remember the day I had the seizure and heart attack, and the panic and helplessness of knowing that my body was (possibly fatally) malfunctioning and that I could do nothing to change that… I remember the anger and frustration... the RAGE that overcame me at times because I did everything "right" for the sake of having a healthy body and it still could not save me from illness and near death. I remember the feeling of spinning and falling into blackness… I remember lights... the colorful halos and energetic impressions of love and compassion from the doctors and nurses doing everything in their power to pull me back from death’s grasp. I remember vividly, though I can’t recall when it happened in earthly terms, that there was a moment when it was my choice. MY CHOICE, wether to let go and find release from my suffering… or hold onto my body despite the pain and suffering that came along with holding on. I remember being saved by being a single mother. I know without a doubt that my 18 month old son, who was waiting at home for his one and only parent to come back, was the ONLYreason that was worth holding on for… That I chose to live rather than embrace death seven years ago, and I have been running from her ever since.

I have thought a lot about death… I’ve also spent a lot of time distracting myself from all of the unknown that death holds… I’ve spent years pushing away the fear that, for several years after my illness, consumed nearly every moment, waking or sleeping. That even now, years later, sometimes sneaks up on me in the dark or stillness and catches me off guard. It's the panic that wraps around your throat.. sits on your chest until you beg, eyes stinging, ears ringing… gasping for your breath... drowning on dry land…. The feeling that the whole room is spinning… the world is whirling so fast that the sky above is an empty hole that I could fall into, lost forever… The helpless realization that not my beloved parents, not my home, my dog, my martial arts training, shotguns, or even the solidity of the earth itself offer even the slightest protection from death. That I am being chased by my doom… and that there is no escape. Not for me, not for you, not for the kindest person I know, or for the richest famous jerk we all envy and despise, and not for the poorest folks I’ve seen sleeping on the streets… it is truly the great equalizer. I don’t know about the rest of you… but I know that this realization has scared the SHIT out of me for over three decades… I’ve alternated between being paralyzed by my fear and living in denial of my mortality since I was old enough to remember… and I am TIRED of this routine. I am tired of choosing safety over freedom out of desperation to prolong the inevitable for as long as possible. I am tired of existing in a state of semi consciousness and finding distraction after distraction to keep me from facing reality and all that goes along with it. 

This February was my Thirty-Fourth birthday… I was incredibly fortunate to be able to spend it in Italy with some of my loved ones. The trip there was supposed to be a relaxing, sightseeing vacation… but for me, it turned into a pilgrimage… Everywhere I looked I saw my mortality. I saw MY death.. our collective death… tombs, and great arenas where thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children had lost their lives violently. Entire cities lost in fire and ash. Churches filled with statues of humans that once walked the same earth as I now walk… beautiful paintings almost all with images of suffering… of the horrors of religious wars….  Buildings built by unknown, nameless masons, still standing thought their names are long since forgotten. Marble busts of important (or self important) wealthy rulers, intelligent thinkers, godly men, and gifted artists… none made anymore immortal by their gold or gifts or by the noseless, soulless stone ghosts they’ve left behind than the ones whose faces and flesh have long since decayed and returned to the earth. All just as dead…. no one was spared.

The climax of my journey came at the crypt of the Capuchin Friars. The crypt is build from thousands of human bones… the ceilings, walls, and doorways built from and decorated with the bones of believers. I stood looking… almost in a state of disbelief at the piles of skulls… of leg bones just like mine… vertebrae of spines that once help up a living conscious human being.

 “What you are, we once were. What we are, you will be” 

said the sign underneath the bone archway… and it finally hit me! Standing there breathing in the dust of lives long since ended… I will NOT live forever. It is so obvious, and yet so earth shattering in that moment that I finally really understood it. I will not live forever.......… and no amount of running… no amount of denial… or fear… or hope… or being good… or being bad. Or distracting myself with glowing screens full of useful information…. is going to change that. All the books I buy… all the yoga mats and Buddha statues… the alter with Jesus and Mary and all my other religious figures… my cabinets full of the healthiest foods money can buy…. my bottles of pills.... my love for my son.... NOTHING. NOTHING is going to stop my life from ending one day or another, just as so many other lives have ended before mine, are ending at this very moment, and will continue to begin and end for long after I have breathed my last. I cannot run. I cannot hide… I cannot make bargains to prolong it… and I have no idea when it will arrive. and despite the various scenarios I can hope and pray for in an “afterlife”, the fact is that I HAVE NO IDEA what happens after we die, and I don’t believe that any of us DO know without a doubt… So it seems that what I am left with, is the need for peace. And if I cannot find peace in any of the human answers about what comes after death, than I must make peace with DEATH itself, with my own soul, and with the life that leads me to that death. 

As I carried that crypt with me through the rest of Italy, I came to a few further realizations. In particular, I was thinking about terminal illnesses… and how I have heard stories about people who find out they have a year to live, and how they spend that year making peace with death… living fully every moment they have left, for in that year they realize the preciousness of every breath. I realized that when I hear those stories I feel a twinge of envy. Yes, ENVY. For those who are in the final days of their lives… I want to know what it is to live with such intent, intensity, gratitude, purpose, as is inspired by a death sentence…. But what folly! I HAVE a death sentence same as they do, same as you. Why can’t I choose to live as if I am dying without a cancer diagnosis?

I have returned from my unintentional pilgrimage a changed woman… I have decided to live this next year as if it is my last, and for all I know it could be! In fact, I am consciously choosing to believe, and behave as if this might indeed be my final year. Perhaps I truly will not live to see thirty five. I have begun the process of facing and letting go of my fears of dying. I have begun treating all those who I love as if these interactions may be among our final ones. I am finding myself quicker to smile. Quicker to admit when I am at fault… to say I am sorry, or “I love you”. I am already noticing I am less inhibited and cautious in socializing with friends, family, and acquaintances alike… If there is no “tomorrow” how can I go wrong in speaking the truth through my eyes? If my intention is to leave this world with slightly more love in it than when I came into it than why do I need to fear being real in expressing my love? 

… I have spent many moments already the past few weeks crying… letting myself feel my fear… my pain at the thought of leaving this beautiful world. Of saying goodbye to those I love the most. I have spent much time sitting by myself or snuggling with my son, and asking myself: If this is my last year on this earth, what do I want to do with it? Who am I when all the non-essential is stripped away, and what is it that is truly important to me? What is it that I want to leave behind when I am gone? I can’t say this has been an easy process… or that I haven’t slipped at times into old habits of momentary denial…or complacency. But I can say that I keep faithfully coming back to this process… breathing through this meditation that is steering my life now in ways I’ve never experienced before. Maybe it is morbid to consciously focus on my own demise… but I have never felt so alive, haven’t felt so conscious in going through my days since I was a child. I have no idea where it is leading me in life, but if nothing else I believe that in facing the end head on, I may go more peacefully to my grave some day, whether sooner or later time will tell. One way or another, I hope that when she arrives on my doorstep, Death will be like an old friend that I know well… And just maybe, instead of grasping and gasping in terror at my last breath, I will find that I am able to greet her lovingly, and graciously make my final exit.

from private pages of journey journals...

Italy.


Angels in mustaches with breasts
gazing at each other from frescoed walls
for times untold, in ancient halls
Riding on unicorns
scaling castles tall.
reading maps of pleasure
unuburied treasures
heart without measure
unblinded eyes relearning to see
be patient with me
for what is a sea?
and what is it to see...
tagging through a door
playing hide and seek
a piano or a floor?
and when and what to say
we shall see another day...

sing sweet nightingale
from the waters or the shore
sing sweet nightingale
a piano or a floor?
and what are words anyway?
judgments made of that which we feel
but cannot hear.
stone that cannot speak?
proclamations for time to carry
V's misplaced by ancient races
wounds erased and mirrors faced...

I still remember your eyes
when you said: I love me.
you meant it.
more meaningful than any other words in the world
for only a man who truly loves he
could ever STAND and love this she.
and its okay if not you...
the lesson was your truth.
there is not desperation now
only scars of fears
of years of deflation
tears of re-creation
years of patience
searching... seeking self.
my heart on a shelf
refusing who could not walk
refusing using
and manipulative talk.
damages repaired with gold
kintsugi woman: a treasure to hold.
a tearful mess
a tender breast
a carried stress
a strong lioness
Imperfectly divine
this paradoxical heart of mine.
strength in fragility
but delicate to whom petals are open
easily broken
taking care with whom I share....
cracks can be shattered
torn or tattered
if crushed spirits can be mended
mended parts can surely break.

I've been found
on a pilgrimage of love
standing naked on mountains above
swimming in the sea... looking overboard for me.
crawling on my belly in the cold dark places of the world
feet torn and bruised.
lost and used
lifting and leaping
gifting and keeping
roses sleeping
beauty reaping
mother weeping... tears still seeping
heart still beating
love still seeking.

only open hearts are spoken.

only.
broken.

hearts.
are open.


2/25/15

throwing fits

I throw tantrums.

I throw tantrums when I don't get my way.
Spitting venom like fire
emotions balanced on tight wire
I am 8
In my play and these other ways
tears run fast and furious
for this heart so curious
anger like an explosion
quick and painful
left to deal with the aftermath
the disaster in my path
always ready to be right
steeled and armored for a fight
red blurring my eyes
clouding usually clear sight
don't know how to let go
the years where punching back
with words and ways
was all I could do
when i was green and new.
closing down or throwing up
throwing stuff
used to punch walls and steering wheels
overwhelmed by the pain of helplessness I feel
helplessness.
a helpless mess
without a voice
without a choice
and now its my way always
all days, my way or you'll pay.
tears or jeers or throwing spears.
daggers for eyes
angry spiteful cries...
hypnotizing, mouth is lying
kindness crushing, soul is dying
with years some fears are multiplying.
breaking in pieces
shattered peace
why am I so weak?
can I be whom I seek
who I long to be, ache to see?
pretend is she....
If you see my flames would you feel the same
if its you I blame?
venting frustrations
verbal shits
not with fists but my mouth hits.
hissing throwing fits.
this helplessness
this heavy mess.
inherited stress
does it make me less if I'm never my best?
failing tests...
abandoned quests...
If I'm never she who my heart knows I could be... should be?
can I still be love, be loved
If I'm not a perfect me?

Reflections on a mother's heart... (bathed in the waters of venice)

I am that which I love with or without the object of my love
and yet I am not and can never be.
For I am an observer of the most exquisite beauty
momentary clarity
glimpses of joy.
infinity impartially
Witnessing and guiding him
but try though I might, I can not swim.
only rarely reflected in the waves...
I see:
the man I'd love my son to be.


The choices made?
I've been mistaken.
Love I've given:
more was taken.
true love was given
heart still breaking...
so many burdens
trying to juggle gracefully
holding tight so gratefully.
I nurture this seed
gifted amidst dangers
instinct never heeded.
The life I prayed for
saved my own.
but oh so poorly... poorly sown.
I carry now this heavy load...
what i can not give him
the ways I can not show...
how to be solid... strength...
how to stand steady... bending but not breaking.
emotions flow through me like waves
rippling river tides
breathless rides.
random like rhymes
tears at times
worry that my tides might carry him away
in future days
leave him flighty and fearful
tearful in all the wrong places.
I've seen so many faces
miserable man after man
none able to stand.
not fit by far to hold his hand.
its not me the desperate cries come for...
Though my longing is deep in its own right.
it's not for me I weep softly at night..
So much of my heart walks free of my body
The need in our lives is in my dearest's eyes...
my tearful heart, he laughs and lies...
a unfinished poem from days gone by...
so many moments failing
at what he needs for me to be
Loving always loving...
but I haven't tools to offer
all the things he needs to see.
though he grows with what I give
these regrets are what I live...

I wish that I had known
how the choices I made in time
would shape a life that isn't mine.
I wish I'd known what would be
and that foolish little girls
with fantasies
could create lasting ripples in a massive sea
I wish I'd understood
what's been shown with passing years.
I wish that I had known my son...
and could mend hearts with my tears...

That awkward moment.

These are the moments
when I stare into the darkness
blindly trying to see right
what it is that hangs over me in this night.
and these are the moments
when I am not sure if i have nothing to say
or so much of everything to give away that its hard
to choose even one gift... a word out of the infinite
sounds, stories and songs tap dancing on my brain
pouring down like rain disappearing down the drain
plucking away at my heart strings
heart sings... heart stings.
when I realize that for all practical purposes and in spite of intent.
the gift of words too often fails me when my lips address those who matter most.
that despite my desire and my despair
despite my depths i so badly want to issue invitations into
as I am better with frozen than I am with fresh,
so am I better with keys than I am with flesh.
but maybe (I tell myself to banish those lonely banshee cries)
that its okay because ultimately wether you are laying beside me,
or a hundred miles away
we are each alone, always, every moment for all time...
the paradox that we are always only ever together...
(skin being the most irrelevant thing on earth.)
followed closely by space and time as boxes and desks and paychecks
death and taxes and insurance cards.
safety only comes in sleep... in counting wolves instead of sheep?
unconsciousness existence is easy as pie... silently numbly, struggle free. we die.
an easy path from breath to death, all boxed up from crib to cubicle to coffin...
ipad ipod iphone isee
nothing but H D T V
these are the moments when i ramble... like a child mumbling in her sleep
and even unconsciousness is not what it seems
only half of what i say makes any sense to anyone
but to me what is sensible is senseless and nonsense is common sense...
trapped in here... daring to see the way through fear...
this is the mirror writing on the asylum windows.
feeling like i could burst out of my seams
burst forth with dreams
untamed and untethered you could spread out all those feathers... no more terror. No more rage...
an entire universe all locked up like a peacock in a songbird's cage...
beautiful tail... pride and joy
fluffy and blue.... beautiful boy
sticking out awkward and odd from between the bars of these cells..
ridiculous and foolish and still a majestic site to behold
for those that can see through walls and bars and ties that bind... to seek, to find.
These are those moments when I wish so hard that I was better at saying what I feel, instead of what I think.
that i could flow and roll smooth off my tongue... could dance words into in our shared space. could speak my heart into your face.
moments when i know that i care so fucking much that i can't breathe, and yet I don't care at all... all at once, and somehow that makes perfect sense.
these are the moments when I hold you in my heart. an image in my mind, a snapshop of frozen time. Smiling into the dark... so beautifully for no one to see, just to feel... just to be.
These are the moments when I know without a doubt that god and love are one and the same and that those words mean everything....and absolutely nothing,
for you cannot own it if you haven't FELT it. and you cannot own it just the same.
Ownership is a lie... fatally flawed....
possession is illusion. and so are your laws.
These.
are the moments when i know with out a doubt
that the whole world is coming down upon on my head and yours...
watching collapsing towers and great walls falling...
laughing and despairing at the sheer wonder... the madness of it all.
Explosions shocking the world...
watching the fireworks with the awe of my seven year old self bouncing on my knee.
because who else can I be?
these are the moments looking through walls and watching through glass ceilings.
when i stare into the darkness until I can see right through it to the stars
clear and bright above.
only through the night comes the dawn's first light
and every, everything.
is gonna be alright.

The truth about truth.

In your finest moment
and in your final hour
There is no one watching you.
there never was...
no parading,
no one grading,
rating your final performance
there is no extra credit
there is only here and now
no one is a star
despite how many there are
no one is an extra,
seven. billion. people.
here
and
now.
so many more who came before
and those still yet to be.
seven. billion. humans.
enough to make my head, my heart
ache at the insignificance of my everything.
no one is a star,
even names you know by heart
someday forgotten
sooner or later
we are all lost
in space and time
we are each the star only of our own lives
and most of the time I barely even want to watch mine.
and yet...
and yet?
our lives are an illusion,
our journeys, the same.
woven together
tied to each other
from mothers breast
to our final rest
because
we are ONE soul
born and born again
incalculable times
in this infinite universe
walking in different shoes
no shoes...
assorted faces, races, and places
each you is me
and each me is you
though we tell ourselves otherwise
though we spend most days
identifying ourselves with our disguise
our age, name, size
most moments of each day
time passed away
trying to set ourselves apart
to stand out from the crowd
to cry out loud that WE are here
distinguish ourselves as special
uniquely divinely us.
The truth is that you ARE special
and so am I
and so is he
and so is she
because you
and I
and he
and she
are we
The truth is
everything and everyone
is ONE
holy in wholeness
the definition of divine
what I choose to do
to you
is done to me because
I am You
there is no divide
there is no outside

The truth is:
we are here
in this crowded aloneness
feigning uniqueness
wandering in beauties aimless
lost in an ocean of the nameless
drifting and drowning in loneliness
convinced of our only-ness
only to realize
our
oneness.
plot twist.
because
the irony is
that in writing this very truth
I know, my onlyness
is seeking acknowledgement
of my uniqueness
from all of you nameless
to lessen my loneliness...

truth is always harder to digest
than it is to regurgitate.
ain't that the truth?

Namas-fucking-te you walking contradictions.

Oh Ego, you are a tricky motherfucker.

Everywhere I look lately, I am seeing signs that tell me to shed my need to cultivate an image of perfection. I went to post something less than spiritual and blissful yesterday on my facebook status, and just before I posted it, I hit "cancel". Then I sat and thought for a minute about why I felt I couldn't share something that spoke to me in that moment... IMAGE. Plain and simple. Over the past few months in particular, things have been going really well in my life. Interesting people and situations are pouring into my world in abundance. I've been feeling really good most of the time energetically. I'm finding my roots and growing in ways that have been a long time coming... During this time I have written and published several poems and articles that have explored some deep recesses of my heart and soul. I have spent time in places that have broken the cracks in my being wide open. Have connected with many beautiful humans, and have experienced a few particularly intimate encounters that have been massive sources of growth and joy in my life. For all of this, and for my life in general, for my family, my health, my friends, and my connection to the divine, I have enormous gratitude. Most of my posts these days on social media consist of expressing this gratitude, exposing bits of vulnerability, allowing myself to unabashedly share my inner strength, spoken out loud to the world through my keyboard and onto your screen.

Its been an amazing ride. I have received so much support and acknowledgement from men and women from all over the earth, those I have know for years, and those I have never met, but that my words have connected with. For these connections and responses... for this incredible support, I have never felt more blessed in my life. But this grateful, wise, strong me is NOT the sum of who I am. My ego tries to tell me that this holier, shinier version of me is the only one I should embrace, should be only moving in ways that encourage her growth. That my less than holy thoughts should not be expressed. That I might alienate all these people who have recently been such a source of uplifting support. Perhaps a wise and strong woman should not talk about the days that nothing was accomplished because of my lack of motivation... my laziness. Or that a secure and self loving woman should not in moments of weakness and desperation share with the public eye that though I am self loving, and self respecting, sometimes I feel so lonely and in need of a lover, of a partner, that my sadness consumes me for a time. Does a strong woman wallow in self pity sometimes? Does a great mother have moments when she'd give damn near anything for an hour of child-free bliss... peace and quiet. Does a grateful and spiritually strong person have days when reading or hearing other people constantly, consistently, and ONLY expressing gratitude and spiritual notions is actually infuriating.

I find myself wondering if some people really are truly able to stay in that place of loving gratitude and white light ALL THE TIME, or if its an act to manipulate public opinion of them. To maintain a pedestal or cultivate a guru image... I am tempted, myself, to do the same, and I wonder if perhaps these beings who appear on social media and in social gatherings to fart white light and radiate loving kindness 24/7 actually do experience the same moments of self doubt, frustration, anger at injustices in life and the larger world... do they just not express them? Is expressing our less than desirable traits and weak moments in time somehow failing? Does it make us less worthy of the admiration or appreciation of others?

I'm not sure how the rest of the world sees it, but I am realizing that the people I feel the most genuine respect for are the ones who don't have a polished image. Those who occasionally slip up with an expression of ignorance, or an insanely awkward statement. People who's actions and interests are seemingly in conflict at times. The ones who have an occasional angry rant where they acknowledge that we live in a world that is not only beautiful and full of abundance, but is also simultaneously full of selfish assholes, greedy douchebags, hypocrites, starvation, mayhem, political corruption, murder, and so very many reasons to despair. To watch people who come across my newsfeed with only puppies and unicorns, Gandhi quotes, beautiful images of home-cooked gourmet meals, and "Namaste"s is almost as depressing and soul crushing as watching those who only ever have something angry, morbid, or bitter to say. Why can't we be both our light and our dark? Why can't I have days, moments, sometimes even weeks where I am on top of the world, where it seems that there is magic around every corner and that blessings are abundant and that I can't help but let that spill out into my virtual avatar and onto your wall. On the flip side why can't I have days where I've heard one too many lies out of the mouths of old white men with blood stained hands to keep my fucks and shits to myself. Why can't I write a rant about how annoying it is to be told over and over by so many well-meaning but IMHO sorely misguided folks that voting is THE solution to the fucked up world we live in...

Can I love being with people but also tell you that my social awkwardness feels crippling sometimes? Can I go to a heart opening Kirtan ceremony one night to be filled with loving gratitude, and don a Guy Fawks mask at a rally the following night, filled with righteous indignation and anger at the intrusions and violence of the police state?  Can I be a feminist and still express that I think that many of the ideals and statements of the women on my feminist Facebook groups are incredibly misplaced, even though the rest of the ladies all seem to be in agreement. Can I believe in equal rights for women and still want a man to be the head of my household? Can I be strong and independent and still melt when men tell me I'm beautiful and bring me flowers? Can I be a yoga practitioner who is not currently keeping a regular Asana practice. A holistic lifestyle embracing, natural food eater who took a Tylenol last week and eats wheat bread and bacon, and who even (gasp) ate a hot dog and macaroni and cheese for dinner last night. Can I believe in freely giving love, in not owning our romantic partners, and still not want to share my lover with any other? Can I offer blessings with one breath and spout a "fuck that" in the next? Can I be a non-armpit-shaving hippie girl who likes blue eyeliner? A barefoot gardener who smiles at seeing red toenails against my compost stained toes. A homesteader who sometimes lets the veggies I busted my ass to grow, rot away on the counter because I can't find the motivation to make myself fire up the pressure-canner? Can I be an environmentalist who sometimes grabs a Poland Springs bottle at the gas station. Can I be a peace activist, humanist, and prefer-to-be-pacifist who loudly defends my right to keep my guns and would put a hole through someone who was threatening the lives of my family? Why do we have to fit ourselves into these neat and tidy stereotypes? Can't I be a walking, breathing, living, loving, fighting, lonely, self loving, securely insecure, beautiful contradiction. Can you be too? Can't we drop our images... our need to be only seen at our best?

Maybe it's the power of the full moon in Taurus bringing this rebellious inner child out in me, or maybe astrology is superstitious bullshit (I don't know if I'll ever make up my mind one way or another and I'm okay with that), but I am dropping my image polishing act. I invite you to do the same. The fart jokes and the uplifting quotes. The amazing homemade kale salads and the leftover Dunkin Donut's bagels. The good, the bad, and the ugly, I love you all the more for your realness my friends. Let it all hang out! Namaste and have an abso-fucking-lutely amazing day...

Vulnerability in the Face of Fear

 I couldn't sleep tonight... Faces of old flames and flings flashing through my mind... I thought about calling one I still talk with from time to time, asking him where ( I went ) we went wrong... maybe that would help me understand this question I've been asking myself lately.... Where do I keep stumbling in my (over before they've hardly even begun) relationships? What is my pattern?

I thought about my first boyfriend... the first time I ever "made out" at sixteen. How awkward and unsure I felt. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, and I was afraid of it going further than I was ready for if I responded too much. Afterward he told some of our coworkers that he cheated on me because I just laid there. I thought about boys I had crushes on as a teenager.. especially about the boy who drunkenly took my innocence at nineteen.. The one I adored, even though he wouldn't be my boyfriend. I only wanted him to kiss me and hold me and tell me he loved me. I didn't want it from him that way. I told him NO. Many times in those moments before... When he forcefully entered anyway, I pretended to enjoy it... told myself that this was love-making like in those romantic movies. What else could I do? I had kissed him... curled up next to him on his bed... I practically gave him permission by being in his bed. Anyway, I was probably just a chicken, and it was good I got THAT
over with... now, I wouldn't have to worry about my "first time" anymore. That house was full of friends and colleagues. I supposed I could have stopped it, faced the embarrassment, anything would have woken the dozens of bodies sleeping under that roof, but I had no idea that making love wasn't supposed to hurt.

I thought about the guys I barely knew, but clung to in my desperation for validation that I was loveable. I though about the  couple close guy friends that I really had loved but was unable to keep... I thought a lot about the paranoid eyes of the man I had stayed with the longest, and about how my body felt slamming into that indented wall. I thought about the women whose gentle, safe arms I fell into for a moment or three to escape the threat of men... I thought about all the men whose hearts were an abyss of unavailability. Those who lived too far away or had no time and space for me... the ones who were somewhere else, or with someone else. The men too old or too young or simply walking very different paths then my own but that for some reason I STILL poured so much of my energy into... Tossing and turning in my bed, I thought and thought about why? What is the pattern...  What is the lesson? Where is the mistake I keep making time after time? Faces and kisses passing before my minds eye... faster and faster... Why? They had nothing in common except..... except ME.

Then like a ton of bricks in the dead of night, it hit me.... I am the same girl as I was when I laid there, paralyzed by fear, at sixteen... I am TERRIFIED at truly connecting with men. Terrified of intimacy, real multi-dimensional, lasting emotional intimacy. And I am terrified to even admit that out loud... to expose that vulnerability. The truth is, I have no idea how to relate in a healthy way to men...

I have struggled so much with trying to find what is a healthy expression of my femininity...  From the time I was very young, and realized that me being a girl meant mostly that I was supposed to be something other than what the boys I was friends with could be. My baseball cap and holy blue jeans didn't fool anyone.. As I grew our differences became more obvious. I wasn't welcome on the baseball team, I had to use the bigger more awkward ball, throw softer, and run less aggressive... Being a "girl" was apparently an insult that meant you were weak. I was supposed to put on a shirt now, though my brothers still didn't have to on those hot summer days. Girls weren't supposed to get dirty and scratched up and climb trees with the neighborhood boys..  I was supposed to want to be kissed by them... and in time, I did. One neighbor boy with particularly nice eyes and cute freckles definitely did not like or want to kiss me after being shoved backward down a grassy hill for picking on my little brother... Eventually I gave up on trying to prove I was not weaker, but just as good as the guys, and accepted my lower status. Sweet Valley Twins books and Saved by the Bell on TV said I was supposed to talk silly, use the word "like" a whole lot, and twist my hair with my fingers while I giggled... I was supposed to wear a bra so my breasts wouldn't bounce too much, and definitely not run when boys might be watching. My best friend and I decided we should swing our hips more. So I wiggled when I walked, but it only made me feel more awkward and stiff.  Maybe I was supposed to color my lips with that oily, bad tasting, salmon colored avon crap if I wanted someone to kiss me like Jack kissed Rose in Titanic.... And then there were the magazines I found under my older brother's bed, and in the tree house out in the woods that belonged to those neighborhood boys... Was I supposed to make faces like those?! Yikes! Was my body supposed to do THAT with a guy if they kissed me?! I knew I wanted someone to kiss me... and I knew that because I didn't have a penis I wasn't supposed to play hardball... And that being a girl was nowhere near as good as being a boy. Beyond that I wasn't sure how I was supposed to relate with boys once our differences became apparent and friendships became complicated. I tried giggling when a crude coworker at my first job at the McDonalds asked me to go out with him because I had big boobs. Soon after, I tried drinking more than I knew I should because it would make me feel less awkward around the guys, made it easier to accept their domination. In my naivety I tried being flirty back at their dirty, as if I had just tons of experience. I tried being cute and sweet... or smart and sassy... As time went on, I tried just submitting to the one I loved even though he hadn't respected my "NO". I tried being a best friend to one and still was left in the dust. I tried being EVERYTHING to someone and anything I thought they wanted me to
be. I even tried giving my soul up to one, out of my twisted idea of love, intimacy, and what it meant to be a supportive woman. Then after ending up completely broken and tangled in a heap of pain, I wrapped myself with layers of undesirability by eating my fear. Finally, I picked myself up by the boot straps, hit the road running, shaved off my long beautiful hair, and tried being so tough and so strong, so quick on the draw, so fiercely independent, determined to see even the slightest hint of deviousness in everything masculine, that NO ONE could penetrate that barbed wire and chastity belt. And then... I grew SO sick, and so very tired of trying to be anything. Except. ME.

A little at a time I have been learning who ME is... most of the time I think I have an pretty good idea of that now. She (me) and I have become rather good friends. I am growing more solid in myself and my wholeness every day.   I still struggle, though, with allowing the feminine in me to find her true expression. To let her be strong and secure, yet soft and receptive... firm but yielding... I fumble at times with being a healthy "her" as a lone woman standing on my own two feet... I have difficulties as a single mother trying to embrace my feminine while also strongly embodying the masculine in playing both roles trying to raise up my young son to be a good man...
So when life throw the threat of intimacy with a sturdy, red blooded, passionate, intelligent, emotionally and physically available man into the mix... Holy Shit. Life suddenly resembles a panic attack. My heart is pounding, thoughts racing. I can't breathe. I can't think clearly. My emotions shift into overdrive. My words are scattered. I am that same sixteen year old laying in that dirty bedroom that smelled like old stinky socks with my twenty one year old manager on top of me. I am that nineteen year old with a gigantic crush on her rapist. I am that twenty five year old being a martyr for her abuser.  Terrified that I have no idea what to do, how to do this "right". Terrified to take power... terrified to give it all away... Terrified to trust in someone that might use any vulnerability to crush me or control me.... To let someone in who might wreck everything I've worked so hard to build for myself. In my panic and terror, it seems the only thing to do is to flee as fast as my
legs can carry me, or to take up arms and fire a warning shot to send him packing.

I thought about all of this tonight, and though I am not sure what tomorrow will bring... somehow just realizing it... Admitting to myself that I am scared shit-less by intimacy with men, gives me hope that I can begin to find my way past it. Maybe understanding and speaking this out loud to the world might be the next step I needed to take toward healing this fearful heart of mine. A crucial breakthrough in finally finding true intimacy... with someone who is not insecure, violent and controlling or devious and manipulative predators as so many of my early tastes of men were, but is also not safely emasculated or unavailable as have been so many that I have spent my devotions on in recent years...

So, this goes out to the men out there who are maybe just as terrified of approaching me as I have been of opening to you... Or maybe it'll speak to just one of you, 'cause really all I need is just one right man today to sweep away all of yesterday's wrong ones. If you are striving to be whole.. if you are so close to wholeness that you can taste it, mostly steady in what it means to be a healthy man, but maybe still struggling with relating to women. Lets do this together. Lean into each other's edges and learn as we go. I won't bite if you don't... If you are a man who knows what it is to be comfortable and grounded in your masculinity, may I make a request from the bottom of my opening, loving, lady heart? I will try my best to resist the urge to shoot or run. Please be patient with me as I drop my guard a little at a time. Comfort my fears, embrace me in my tears, invite me to get close, gently disarm me in your presence, and encourage me to stand strong in my femininity. I
will let you share much of the lead and open doors for me, but will walk on my own and carry most of my own baggage. I will soften these arms that keep you at a distance and lean on you just a little, if you'll promise to treat me as your beloved, and not like your pet, your property, or your prey. I will receive you into my heart and passionately welcome you into my body if you can show me that you genuinely care more about lovingly penetrating into my soul than my vagina (thought I don't fault you for desiring both). If you give it to me, I will gently hold your heart as my most precious treasure. Show me you are secure, and I will melt for you. I am tired of being a wide eyed doe, with wolves around every tree.  I don't want to have to stand sentry to my home and heart 24 hours a day, and I don't want to be afraid of you anymore. Will you help me?

The sexiest soul...

Thursday, October 2, 2014

The sexiest soul...
I know whom I seek
with the seeing-ness of my heart
I don't know the details of your ancestry...
I don't yet know your name
Or what your face will look like..
but a little at a time you are taking shape....
One piece at a time the important parts become clear...
For the first time, I know now what I need in he who is fit to walk beside me.
I have seen pieces of you in the face of other lovers
Felt you in the embraces of friends
I have seen traces of you in my gardens...
I've watched you in my son's laugh.
In the wisdom of my dad's words,
the character of my brothers.
The pure expressions of what it means to
embody the masculine
I have witnessed in so many...
and yet there is but one I call to.

You.

You have the sexiest soul I have ever seen
my adoration of you cannot be adequately expressed
without at least one expletive for added emphasis
you exude light, lightness, enlightenedness...
even in your imperfections.
Perfection bores me as much as symmetry
Give me variegation, specks and splats
nonsensical defects to move me
My slightly cracked, eccentric self
appreciates your patches and blemishes,
I wouldn't have you without them.
There is such lovely, raw humanness in your breaks and scars,
your frailties are the Achilles heel where I can touch you.

I know true love in you...
your tenderness and strength in the way you hold my hand.
The way you love you, as much as I love me.
The way you gaze into my eyes unflinchingly.
Let me see right into you without shame
but with a blissful smile... the trust of a child
The way you nuzzle my breasts
with the softness of a nursling...
The world sees in you
the great mane of a Lion.
I know you to be a kitten,
playfully rolling over to show your soft belly
velveting your paws when we wrestle
When we walk side by side
our strides match effortlessly
when we make love
the act itself is orgasmic
raw, exquisite, ecstatic...
pulsing, singing out, sweating, breathing each other in.
I hunger to know what every
inch of your body tastes like
on my lips and tongue.
time and space dissolve in your eyes
I see God when I watch your face
fall over the edge...
the little death of orgasm.
I melt into your delicious kiss...
when you are inside me I do not lose myself in you
but find a stronger self hidden in the depths that you penetrate to
You ask so gently and so firm to be let in
and I soften to you in a way I never had before
invite all of you inside, in full consciousness
not responding from fear
blocking openings with old pain..
but surrendering... yielding,
entrusting myself into your arms

I desire to know all of you that you would share.
whisper to me your dreams
waking and sleeping both
I will speak out loud my greatest fears
and deepest sorrows,
the ones that could crush me... some so great
I may not have even admitted them to myself yet
I will trust, that you will never throw them back at me
in anger or in your own fear or despair..
will you trust me with your stories as well?
Where do you need to see on this earth
before you draw your last breath?
What moves you? Inspires you?
Fills you with this passion I see overflowing
oozing out of every pore.
Hey baby, want to mix and mingle our passions?

I wonder, where would we live?
I dream of spending half the year
here in the embrace of my tribe
half the year exploring all of the ins and outs of humanity
of generosity, geology, geography, of anthropology....
will that move you too?
Perhaps I have read too many books
but I picture a houseboat docked on the Mediterranean sea...
or in the long Island sound
or crossing the expanse of the Atlantic...
I don't know how to sail. Do you?
Will my vision combine with yours
into something even more magical?
have you read even more books than I?
Or will you help me ground these fantasies
into something more stable and sturdy?
I am strong but scattered at times
I have compassion, courage,
and faith enough to spare
but sometimes lack the drive
to follow through.
I fly like a honeybee from flower to flower
drinking in life's nectar.
Grand visions from spreading my
bluebird wings and soaring so high...
Bouncing from thought to thought
like a brightly colored rubber ball
from a vending machine.
Will you stand by and catch me from time to time?
Help my feet find the floor?

I'll find myself lost in thought gazing at you quietly sometimes
while you read a novel,
sit engrossed in your creative expressions...
or perhaps lost in your own thoughts...
I will be thinking that life is even more miraculous
than the plots of those predictable fairy tales...
I'll watch over you some nights when you sleep
face softened by dreams
almost angelic in this moment
your peaceful breath flowing in and out
filling me with gratitude that you are here in this world
and of all that world,
you have chosen to be here with me... Just as I have chosen you.
these quiet moments with you
contrasting with so many colorful ones.

Can we clown our way into the hearts of so many along our path?
Bring laughter and healing with us anywhere we go?
merrymaking in each others hearts every day?
Will you sing silly songs and dance with me always?
Stumbling over each other
spinning, whirling
rocking into your arms
gracefully chaotic
face to goofy face
can we embrace our inner fools
wear them on our polka dotted sleeves?
Let us make ape noises
and fart jokes
Play hide and go seek
like we are five
blow raspberries on each other's cheeks
play bongos on each other's bellies,
Make the sacred bond of the pinkie promise
and never ever break them!
Can we eat so many life-giving vegetables
and refreshing, invigorating fruits
and pure, health sustaining foods
And I know that pigs are magnificent, intelligent creatures
and I know that our vegan friends
might crucify us and definitely would not approve
but every now and then, please
can we make bacon at 3 AM?

Will you walk with me while I keep
fumbling lovingly through this journey
of parenthood I have already embarked on?
You may join me when that time is right...
Until then I will stand back sometimes
and watch the two of you,
my son and you, buddies...
goofing around, playing,
building things,
or learning about life.
Jumping on our trampoline,
hiking through the trees,
or riding bikes together.
I will watch you both
and I will smile that beautiful smile you love
knowing that your presence in our life
that your example of how to be an amazing man
that what you are teaching my son
simply by sharing yourself with us
is one of your greatest gifts to me.
If you are willing, my dear one, to be a daddy
I would want to make
so many more babies with you...
or maybe just one...
but if that is a mutual dream
you should find me quick,
my heart will wait for you indefinitely,
my womb will not.
Either way, I want to grow with you.
One radiant breath at a time
to grow old beside you.
I want your lips to be the last ones on earth that I need.
because finally...
Finally,
I know that I am ready for you, my beloved...
Are you ready for me?

The ghost of heartache past

My wise and silly best friend
my passionate, gentle, lover
ran away
three lifetimes ago
In his pocket
a CD that sang my soul
and a piece of my raw heart

The piece that wanted to wear
a band around my finger that
said to all that I had found my HIM.
The piece that wanted so much to see
what miraculous lives we could grow
with his seed planted in my garden
wether she would have his beautiful light eyes
or my dark chocolate ones.
That wanted to see how sweet and gentle
he would be with them...
WE would be with them.
how firm and loving and wise
in guiding them through life.
The piece that wanted to
sit beside him on a swinging bench
on a creaky wooden porch
holding his well worn hands in my soft ones
telling bad jokes
and pressing our wrinkly lips together
like it was the first time
laughing and loving til the end

where that piece was
was a hole torn through
but still beating... still beating
so raw...
so painful
I couldn't breathe
gasping for breath
at your name
chasing sleep for months
sitting in solitude
waiting at first...
perhaps in time he would see
the beauty of what i had been offering...
the preciousness of the piece
the gift he carried in his pocket
and then he didn't come.
the phone didn't ring...
my mailbox stayed empty..
and a little at a time
though at first I don't remember how
I don't remember when
the time passed...

Weeks turned into months
years into whole other lifetimes
I have felt other men
enter into my heart and had them in my body
felt another man put his fist across my face
and his hands around my throat
I've been to the cliffs of death
stood on the edge and looked over
inched back just before i lost my balance
I have carried the seed of another
grew life within me
nurtured it outside of me
I have created out of my body
a small best friend
a miracle.
I have traveled along all the edges of this giant island
I have climbed mountains
crossed oceans
I have written songs to other hearts
though yours was one of the first
and might have been the last
if life was like the stories
I now read my son to sleep with...

Those lifetimes
slowly cauterized the edges
of the hole in my heart
the bleeding subsided...
the pain diminished
and over time, I grew accustomed to
the tension left in my chest
by all those gasping moments
in the aftermath of your beautiful hurricane
and to forget the pain
I forgot how high I held your name
I forgot how great of a piece I had gifted you
I forgot all of those intimate details
of how silly and corny you were
how easy I could tell you anything and everything...
of holding you in my arms
how deep I let you in and
what you felt like inside of me
how your lips tasted.
I even forgot I had a hole scarred
into my heart.

Then there was your voice...
and it all came rushing back like a great flood
all the love
all the desire
all the dreams I had dreamt of you.
all the sorrow....
all the pain...
all the struggles of lifetimes
of teaching myself my own immense worth
though you had not seen it,
and no other man had either.
I can't let you back in my home....
there are doors in my walls...
but how can I trust you with those keys?
I know what kind of devastation you can leave behind.
and I don't know what you might do...
I chose carefully the ground for my home
the foundation has been built as stable as I could
my home has been damaged
but rebuilt as solid as my two small hands could build
it houses all I love... and my most precious... my son.
I know this scar has your name on it.
But I don't know if the piece I gave you would even still fit.
And I don't know if you even kept it,
or if you misplaced it... threw it away...
perhaps you sold it to a collector of rare oddities...
or perhaps it was in your underwear drawer
getting moth eaten next to dirty magazines?
And I don't want it back now.
It was a gift.

I wish I knew what to do with
this ghost of heartaches past
the haunting voice of your love
entered in through my ear and now
Its shaking me.
stealing my breath
stirring my passion
feeling that hole in my heart reopening
old blood flowing
If i let it flow
will it bleed me dry?
will it open the wounds so they can finally truly be healed
would there be any healing in offering up my heart and body
and then watching you walk away again so soon?
would you just take another piece with you when you go?

Soft Animal (I love to love)

A wise sweet friend once told me...
all you have to do to find happiness
is to let the soft animal that is your body
Love what it LOVES...
and I ask myself today,
what does this soft body of mine love?

I love to love.
I love to sing...
to feel my heart pass up through my throat
out over my tounge and fill the space around me...
I love writing,
allowing the thoughts that come unbidden to me
to travel down through the point of my pencil
sharing my own unique view from the windows of these eyes...
I love growing
growing life within me
growing my soul
I love exploring this earth
climbing mountains real or imagined.
growing my experiences in this world
that help me to see even just a glimpse
of life in another soul's shoes.

I love growing seeds,
pushing them gently into the soil,
not too shallow
not too deep
nourishing them with just enough water and food
I love the heat of the sun
on my face
on my gently baking brown shoulders
I even love watching the dark clouds coming across the sky
knowing that mother nature
is about to relieve me of my afternoon garden chores.
I love watching the tiny sprouts
peeking through the dirt.
shy green fingers
feeling their way up through
the darkness of their earthen womb
and then stretching for the sky
wiggling so slowly,
reaching toward the light
I love stretching just like those sprouts
love dancing
moving my body
feeling all the curves of my flesh
and surfaces of skin
the pulse of my heart
pushing life through
and to every edge and corner
of those curves and surfaces...

I love to love
I love breathing.
Being alive...
I haven't always liked breathing...
I held my breath for years...
slowly suffocating,
drowning in my anxieties.
Today though,
I LOVE this breath...
life force
vital energy,
prana that flows into and through me
I love being a channel
a conduit
a bridge between earth and sky...
as we all are.

I LOVE to love.
I love laughing until I cry
and crying until I laugh
embracing and blurring the lines of my humanity
instead of shoving it into a box of goodness or badness.
I love living in the now.
Today is all I know for sure.
Sometimes the uncertainty
the sheer possibilities of future terrifies me.
sometimes I forget for a moment to just BE.
to just BE here NOW.
But not today...
Today I LOVE NOW.
I love here.
I love me.
I truly do...
not in ego.
not in believing that I am better than others
I simply love and recognize the value
of my own unique experience
The light within me.

I love to LOVE
I love me
and I love YOU.
I love all of the beautiful yous
that run by, walk by,
skip and silly walk by.
crossing my path
or walking by my side.
Those of you that I can see in your eyes,
the very same light...
a part of the same soul I see in the mirror
The yous that are living
breathing, GROWING...
exploring every inch of this human experience
living life in love and laughter.
Living each day with a sense of urgency
and yet with an equal dose of serenity
refusing to waste a moment
in the dull dreariness of insecurities
and a life spent half asleep.
BECAUSE,
today is the only day you have,
is the only day we have.

Today,
I will let the softness of my body,
the gentleness of my heart,
the eyes of my soul,
love what it loves
love who I love.

UNSTUCK.

I felt I needed to cry inside
fly away and hide
and so...
I wrote
my soul.
Where is the line
between
embracing the individual path
our extraordinary nature
and walking in ego
standing tall to make amends
to heal each fall
not to make others small.
Does one know?
Do you know?
We are each wonderful
as the wide night sky of winking stars
Strength beyond belief in our scars
some hidden and some worn on our sleeves
all of these details
falling away oh so slowly
drifting breeze
caressing leaves
the shape of our eyes
the shade of our skin
the sounds of our words
the masks and the wardrobe of hats
our years on earth
the places and stories blurred
the burdens and babies birthed
and all the suitcases we pack full
jammed to the bursting point
with things we will never need.
Humbled and awed
by the wild variations of human beauty
Bellissimo.
Wild Beauties.
MESSY, imperfectly perfect beauties
colorful masterpieces,
paintings in progress
some trapped inside dying
to come out and play
some playing so hard
talking so loud
that softness has to be relearned.
Releasing and relapsing
Ripples in the pond...
waves in the sea
in this bubble of peace.
Bouncing off ourselves and each other
like inflateable balls hiting walls...
touching ceilings and floors of heart and mind.
Uncomfortable as it may be
to face our faces
sometimes so clumsy
we feel the fool
making, taking, faking confidence.
struggling against the defenses
we've each spent our lives crafting
walls thickly built, but crumbling fast.
dancing along with present and past...
sometimes with so much grace,
we may very well put the fields of swaying flowers,
the floating butterflies...
to shame.
Insecurities gripping, ripping at our hearts.
Holding and hugging.
Gently.... GENTLY tugging.
playing away the days...
and loving the stuckness away.

Inspired by and given with love to the wild beauties of The Laughing Body, Gesundheit Institute, 2014

mille grazie alla mia bella famiglia 私の美しい家族に千のおかげ a thousand thanks my beautiful family

Existential crisis.

Every moment
Choice.
A crisis of conscience
In this modern marvel
Civilized world of ours...

Which energy efficient lightbulb?
The one requiring hazmat to clean up its deadly dust
Or the one made an ocean away by poorly paid labor.
I stand staring for an hour at the lightbulbs.
Walking to and fro
Sign to sign
Picking up each package in turn.
Weighing the evils of each and the potential for my own ignorance.
What unknown evils may lurk...
What might I unwittingly support with this
Ten dollars of my budget.
Which will use less energy and ultimately
bleed less
of the green
From this hemorrhage,
spilling, falling
Slipping, filling the pockets of utility monopolies,
Holding me hostage
With ever increasing fees
To make up for falling trees
On ancient lines
And collapsing mines
On black lunged men who
Work hard to eat.
Like the one I met at the gateway arch.
We rode the tiny barrel shaped elevator
To the top while he jawed on about his comfort
In small spaces,
And the importance of the fossil fuel industry.
A crude but nice man who coughed much.

I think about him every now and then...
Sometimes when I pump gas into my tiny Toyota.
After all, a fossil fuel
Is a fossil fuel
Is a fossil fuel.
I think about him at the gas pump,
And about the oil rigs I spotted
All across the Midwest
Dotting the landscape by the thousands...
And about my sweet cousin
Who is almost completely shattered
Mind destroyed by his lengthy stay in
The Middle East.
I think about Arab Springs,
And tear gas canisters,
And fire hoses trained on
Random women and men
Covering their faces to keep their skin...
And I wonder if I should buy a hybrid.

I drive by yet another hill,
Flattened sides, vent pipes, dull grassy slope.
My seven year old no longer asks if this one
Is a trash mountain.
He has passed enough now to know one.
I picture that hybrid battery sitting inside
This mountain of trashy majesty
When my son is bent and wrinkled with years.
I think of the coal miner's cough....
And of the contrast between
a life in the sardine-can city
Where my legs would move more
But my lungs would breathe in more shit.
Where my car could be sold,
But my garden could hardly grow.
Where communities that thrive or struggle together
Paycheck to paycheck,
Bread bag to bread bag,
Are one catastrophe away
From perishing together.
I think of suburban sprawl and shopping malls
And acres of green grass...
And miracle-gro poisoned streams
And American dreams
And soccer teams in South America
And wether my son's one and only swingset
should be cheap and crappy and used
Because even that is still better
Than the spaces my uncle's Filipino neighbors
Have to play in...
Or wether it should be pressure treated and new
Because of all the things in this life that I have been
Unable to provide my son,
Including a loving father and the little sister he has always wanted,
This swingset is one thing I CAN offer
As insignificant as it might be....

I think about the unknown pea green dangers of treated wood,
About Chinese labor, Chinese wood, chinese cargo barges
Pulling into port in the depressed city of Aberdeen, Washington.
I think about that beautiful, natural, nontoxic swingset
Made in the grand ole U S of A of Redwood...
And the logging trucks I watched
winding their way down Route 1
On the California coast.
The logs on the back a heartbreaking
Dozen or two feet in diameter.
I think about how much just one thousand USD could buy
In so many parts of the world
Where peoples children play on grounds covered in raw sewage.
Lacking in so much more than the few troubles
In the life my dear sweet son was blessed with.
Will the lack of a swingset
in this i-Infested nation
Encourage him to lead a sedentary life?
Will the movements of his thumbs
Gradually replace those of his tireless young legs?
Will he miss out on the fun of this innocent childhood pleasure?
Or will the frivolousness of such a purchase spoil him?
What example does it set
for me to know, doubtless,
The value of each of those dollars,
The magnitude of those beautiful trees,
The depths of despair of an impoverished existence,
And still hand that salesman that
Little plastic card?

GODdamn all these tiny disasters,
These daily battles,
These lightbulbs and batteries,
And toxic greens,
And men wearing union tees
And magnificent trees and collapsing bees
And electricity fees.
And damn these trash Everests never ending
And all this extra packaging
And damn this "Made in China" sticker
Stuck to this and that
And every item in this Home Depot store
Ever since those wars
I can't shop no more
(Can't sleep either)
Ever since
Every choice in the world.
Ever since
simple existence
Became a crisis of conscience.

Kalee 8/6/14






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

In Living color

Life is not a black and white picture show.
A little at a time my corners soften...
Rounded as I take short walks around the block in another foot's well worn shoes.
My gavel bangs less harsh,
with every mistrial and misstep
Respect coming more readily,
Even for those who aren't simply looking out the window next door, but who own a perspective a half a world away from my view.

Self imposed tower of stone loneliness crumbles
I still have my convictions,
still hold them dear to my soul.
But no longer do they sit heavy noose around my neck
Shackles on my ankles.
Solitary confinement
is a hell of a place.
I refuse to imprison
my heart, my mind
in such passages,
Narrow confines
Inspire only panic and claustrophobia

My body has softened a bit perhaps with experience.
But so has my ego, and I don't mind if I do.
And so it rolls...
In full living color,
Breathing in the variety
Spicy fragrance of life
Liberal.
Conservative.
What does that even mean? A cage for you to sing?
A bird cannot fly, my dear, with only one wing...
Sometimes life is blue,
Sometimes life is yellow
And sometimes the world is green
Because the truth is somewhere
in between.

Kalee 7-10-14

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Pleasantville