FIVE

October 20, 2023

I was at the Costco when they called me and told me. While I was standing there in the book section at Costco smelling the pages of books. In the aisle made of just books they called me and told me- He told me. My husband was the one who told me. He whispered it through the tiny speaker in my phone and he didn’t want to tell me through a small speaker. He wanted to come find me and say it- face of my face, hand of my hand, flesh of my flesh- He wished he was there to say it say it just say it say that my brother, big brother who grilled us all salmon, and for his wife, his four kids, just the night before, was dead. And I was standing by the books and the cart was full and my baby faced me faced my impotent eyes and where— where did he where do I where was I supposed to The man at the checkout counter told me he liked my pretty pink lipgloss.

〰️

I was at the Costco when they called me and told me. While I was standing there in the book section at Costco smelling the pages of books. In the aisle made of just books they called me and told me- He told me. My husband was the one who told me. He whispered it through the tiny speaker in my phone and he didn’t want to tell me through a small speaker. He wanted to come find me and say it- face of my face, hand of my hand, flesh of my flesh- He wished he was there to say it say it just say it say that my brother, big brother who grilled us all salmon, and for his wife, his four kids, just the night before, was dead. And I was standing by the books and the cart was full and my baby faced me faced my impotent eyes and where— where did he where do I where was I supposed to The man at the checkout counter told me he liked my pretty pink lipgloss. 〰️

I was at the Costco when they
called me and told me. While
I was standing there in the book
section at Costco smelling the
pages of books. In the aisle made
of just books they
called me and told me-
He told me. My husband was
the one
who told me. He whispered it
through the tiny speaker in my phone
and he didn’t want to
tell me through a small speaker. He wanted
to come find me
and say it-
face of my face,
hand of my hand,
flesh of my flesh- He wished
he was there to say it
say it
just say it
say that my brother,
big brother who grilled
us all salmon, and for
his wife, his four
kids, just the night before,
was dead.
And I was standing by the books
and the cart was full
and my baby faced me
faced my impotent eyes and where—
where did he
where do I
where was I supposed to
The man at the checkout counter
told me he liked my pretty pink lipgloss.
A single bulb on the strand is dead
where the father is gone the sons and brothers
travel to the place where an inimitable
light is not just dim but dire
disparate the fates of babies cold
steel bats and expired weed killer lie
discouraged here in the garage
where the sons and brothers
and urgent sisters
search for a spare light
new sparks to mend the broken strand
there are some who say if one beam
goes out the others will die with it but
I have not found this to be
true the remaining can
still burn
a flame alive in affliction a
second awareness of a
brilliance breath more
awake to what remains all the bright
because an absence of
one beloved light
the standard tome is told to men in
one sure line but I can see
lives and lights strands
and strings they find themselves
entangled and entwined in
cycling gleams of bulbs and
beams their flicker warm the worn
a collective reflective of flecks
lost — we all still blaze
And out of nowhere
somewhere in the bow
the bending of your
knees and the letting your
too heavy of a fist
fall
fall down open
into the hole hollow
in your lap. More than
holding a flicker or even a
flash or a flame of it—
more than a brilliant
new something smashing
through an abundance
bidden for so long unanswered
cold—
it finally arrived.
Inside our most terrible ache inside
of it, a lost smile came back
home inside the— this literally is
my worst nightmare come
true— the answer to
my plea was unconcealed
was revealed and there
it was inside of me birthed into me
gifted through a cervix
of horror.
A breaking heart and
the chest pain that you hold
with your right hand
and your left hand
too. The crack wrought
from your lonely heart breaking.
It quivers violent,
alone
while the tough shield is
rent from the lonely heart breaking.
Heart cracks hurt bad and are loud.
Pound. Fire.
Pound. Hammer.
Arriving at our nightmare made
true. Split open. Open maybe
torn a slit and there is a dark
red blood letting. Open the clearer sounds of—
Wait.
Wait.
What is that?
hmmmmm hmmmm hmmmm
What is that?
hmmmmm hmmmm
A hum.
A glowing hum—
a hymn
of hearts cracking.
Everywhere. Everyone.
Pulses ripping
arteries tearing. There are so many.
Pound. Fire.
Pound. Hammer.
Pound. Fire. Pound.
Hammer.
hmmmmm hmmmm hmmmmm
How?
How could I not hear
before— the broken beats
inside so vast the
alley of languid beautiful hearts.
And this, the radiant
new something that came
and made whole my
empty fist and open lap
and saved me:
Broken hearts are never lonely.
Oh Father—160 just
one hundred and sixty and ours
the double bond appears
reproachably rended more again than
perhaps the one hundred and
sixty years then and tired
time is a shallow voyage below
all hunger is gone for
the dry land there is no
soil in the heart of
those who now survive on top.
A pirouetting people they remember
to forget but without the forgive oh
forgive the people who
forget the bones beneath all
their fractured feet while
they imagine better their swollen
unction vaults - - -
across mercurial air
I hear diligent mouths demarc-
ated arms asleep their
inert legs.
With utmost reverence for
those mansions Thou hast
prepared—
I’d rather inherit this dirt
the sacred mud fed with a tutored
pain-gained blood it nurses the land
they all carry on
while the compost plays the
groaning score of this
the last best hope our
earth our
ground our
ransomed dust—
Oh keep and let
them bend
shush— listen

FOUR

October 20, 2023

Once blue big flame find here tired now true coals spewing flecks scalding latent lanes of my brain trained sidewalks patient while toddling legs and bouncing clean tongues pounce with white curls on them begin and not will I find where they end on me there is no front or back no start no finish with us odd minutes supply infrequent quiet the fray connects melody in warm ash stored up shores start to speak never this coast want I to walk without this ship built built of blonde curls without the curls I paint fruit made of wax and plastic

I couldn’t find a word to say
to tell you
but it is sediment laid
so many fractured
bits splayed then
compacted
we are
by accreted heat
and particle
non-erasure of
all this time
we build our bed
I see our contiguous
days—the spread
of us
it settles and
I know
I know it stays

our lines
are made firmer
by years and steady mess
turn us into sturdy mass
nothing
nobody
just you and me
and our basin of
that word which
is never all I mean
billions of worlds will
come here and
we will remain all
our layers my love
you are
you are only
we are
we are
we are
Once blue big flame
find here tired now true
coals spewing flecks
scalding latent
lanes of my brain trained
sidewalks patient while
toddling legs and bouncing
clean tongues pounce with
white curls on them begin
and not will I find
where they end
on me there is no front or back
no start no finish with us
odd minutes supply infrequent
quiet
the fray
connects
melody in warm
ash stored up shores start to
speak
never this coast
want I to walk without
this ship built
built of blonde curls
without the curls I paint fruit
made of wax and plastic
There is always dust on the floorboards
every day there is more and though
the task never weakens my effort
does wane, and I worry I can’t
sustain the courage each morning
ahead to dust it again and away.
Dawn is supposed to be new
but mine seem the same. I heard
manna was given— but one day
at a time— so the children would linger
and stay nearby. I heard the ground
remains cursed, not for His, but for ours.
So the dust is consistent, the
weed always sprouts, the work
is unceasing, our time is spent
pleading for dust and weeds and
unmade beds to relent. Maybe
this is the manna: reliable toil—
Capitulating lambs will
succumb till greener dust
we become.
A kind of word a kind of
love we barely know cause we
we can’t hear it said or
sung cause it tills below
shoal and shell the
unabated mining doesn’t always feel
so swell but this form
of love comes in and plans
plans to stay
in all who will
all who will
they may
may ingest the fleshy alm
swill then swallow from the
red iron flavored cup belonging to
One certain
Author and Finisher of love songs
while the gift
first implanted will probably just sit
totally unawares of what
what was given but
soon eventually it begins
it starts to simmer til’
a concentrate is made down
down into One
and you pause surprised
cause you didn’t just drink
something new
you drank and swallowed and
are bound to something big and
you couldn’t do this before but
now you can you
can rise and take
up the bed you’ve been stuck in
and walk
Giants came down hiding
behind the clouds
they thought were the reason
for the overcast land
they took the blessed innards
of the happy youth in the
vacant space laughing left
a horrible festering
beetle who fed on the remnants of
the stuff in the queue for defecation
and the new guest would have
fed on the leftovers of a heart if
there had been any
but there wasn’t
any crumbly
bits left in the place where the
heart would have been the
head of an expanding crusty
creature sat in it and the foreigner
wore the body of the youth
a body still that spoke and walked
and the body ate but none
of these bore the sameness
folks who knew his pallor
and gait took two glances
at first a smile the second squinted
confusion at a trail of
milk in contiguous shlep from
a spoon of deft cheerios
not her milk once she gave
this a new sidekick
and the other arm
occupied something swiped
swiping over and swiping
again sometimes pausing to click
and click then swipe
and though many had missed
it a few of the folk noticed where
the holes of ears should
have been were shiny white
pearls perpetually stored
in the round space
they held a village
counsel to confirm the oddities
they voted and found the youth
responsible some suspected
stranger noise at play
but didn’t raise what—
most continued to pelt the
youth in curious inquiry
the lad seemed to not hear
the clogged ears
more than many days even
years later the grubby
visitor after he’d
collected all
he had been
after even helped itself
to a bit more the gluttonous
hoarder after there wasn’t
any more to take
the antenna
on the head of the
putrid thing sent a memo
for the giants to to come back
and retrieve it home and they
did come back holding the
somehow preserved
insides of the youth
surprising he was not to
their fleshy liking and the giants pulled
out
the fat squirming termite and
replanted all the entrails
of the youth
a sec to find where
each piece had been eventually
to get it right
hearing their own
stomachs grumbling they
broke their retrieved insect the
plump squatter they had just taken
out of the older now body of the boy
they popped it
straight in their mouths
they broke it into
into equal parts of course
the lad is returned
the valley assuaged
the lad is now running as his
way but running
away
away

THREE

October 18, 2023

There was no way the world could be a stage when my back was held by rocks of sand eroding native faces patient caught me pressing me quiet to the mass then when I stood I hated how I swayed chortling tides too familiar taunts of acts and lines. The nearer I bent even to the earth I left rotating skies. Then or new it doesn’t matter because a brilliant particle impervious to those circles that orbit you through time around and back again to re-find again fear she who quiets your limits. Or is she, fear, borne from the acquaintance of limit? Either way, the green spark it drifting somewhere above from below like cotton over mammoth lake and the red eroding mountain— it found me on the rock and welcomed me

〰️

There was no way the world could be a stage when my back was held by rocks of sand eroding native faces patient caught me pressing me quiet to the mass then when I stood I hated how I swayed chortling tides too familiar taunts of acts and lines. The nearer I bent even to the earth I left rotating skies. Then or new it doesn’t matter because a brilliant particle impervious to those circles that orbit you through time around and back again to re-find again fear she who quiets your limits. Or is she, fear, borne from the acquaintance of limit? Either way, the green spark it drifting somewhere above from below like cotton over mammoth lake and the red eroding mountain— it found me on the rock and welcomed me 〰️

Why are the Beatles so gosh dang
good at themselves
and why does age make
their sound so much
louder without even doing
anything else in life they grow
bigger. And why is
Whitney’s mouth and her teeth
the rattle and quiver
changing my whole
reason for staying
on this planet. And why is
there a pain inside
when I quiet everyone
and shhhh turn it up Judy
Garland and her bangs
lamenting that best Christmas
now hymn—
And how is it my
heart has been healed
by certain called
Killers
and their dustlands.
And how can a
marriage
family
town
nation
disagree on
every dang thing
but drop all of it
when the Schuyler
Sisters suddenly work work
even Peggy does
the work and we suddenly all
stop hating
and start singing. Somebody
please tell me
what is this bright magic
standing my frantic
still
til ingested
then dark dust blows
off and the
damned blood flows?
I was born in the chest of an ancient woman
and when I had the courage
to look up
at her I saw she was jagged
and intense but
shrouded safely
too in bristles of tree
and bush and almost
always snow but never
in late summer and early
fall where Timpanogos stood
and still
still will stand bare.
But when it is May the bleach
tipped mountain is varnished in
glowing spring green
from the near
top down to the bottom and she
is smooth and all
her ligaments and bones and
riffs and rocks blur
into one homologous slope and I
have the strongest
urge to run
to the top
as if my Lady
were a small bermish
English hill and then
slide down her
effacement as if
a plaything—
and most bizarre of all is
I size up
her corrugated spine
and imagine it possible.
Where are you going
my little one
Gail Wood sang to me in an
alto vibrato mom of
my mom mostly gentle
always generous there
at the base of Timpanogos
she sang to me both she
and the mountain
bastion to the cold
desert’s discordant climate.
And at their breast time flowed
at the pace nature
grows and the earth and our pulse
seemed to sync in steady
balance and the way
from there was plain
and straight just one
neat single breath up.
Turn around turn around
and the way is dizzy
with twiggy detritus in
the dead growth there
is no trail and on and
on the sole I move on
scorns blisters there are gashes
on haranguing both
occupied outstretched
arms my face
is mocked by
mulish wind— never from
the sitting the waiting
no. But always
from the procession on
fervently on moving toward—
I don’t even imagine I am on
anymore any
longer chasing the summit
I am hunting for vestiges now
of her
her alluvial vibration they
once stabled me I am haunted
by Gail Wood’s words the
dolorous melody
the plaintive phrase
Where are you going
only when my boughs are silenced
by pugnacious wear when
forced to be stayed—
I hear other noises less ghostly
on her waist-high ledges
they are not ringing
from the top they
do not echo from the
base but there
with me on the mountain
in between— somewhere
near I hear voices.
There was no way the world
could be a stage
when my back was held by
rocks of sand
eroding
native faces patient
caught me pressing me
quiet to the mass
then when I stood
I hated how I swayed
chortling tides too familiar
taunts of acts and lines.
The nearer I bent
even to the earth I left
rotating skies.
Then or new
it doesn’t matter because
a brilliant particle
impervious to those circles that orbit you
through time around and back again
to re-find again
fear
she who quiets your limits.
Or is she,
fear,
borne from the acquaintance of limit?
Either way, the green spark it
drifting somewhere above
from below
like cotton
over mammoth lake and the
red eroding mountain— it found me
on the rock and welcomed me
— Of all the loud minds
never exhumed of
all the neurons’
in confluence roaring in
transmission making paunchy
maps and reveries that
wandered down constellations
no one has ever connected
and the dot to dot
sequences of seas
that lead to an ocean
where depth in fathoms
are unfathomable and
impalpable space furnishes leviathans
down to the piddling life alive
and under the surface
landmarks no human eye
in vision
will touch
worlds without number
in one head are made
and the one star seen in satellite maps
where life can live
never listens
but maybe she would hear
if synaptic shouts weren’t
stuck building up
distended
behind tacit tongues
brilliance in billions uncharted
and I wait— I’ve been waiting for
so long for the place
where all the domains real
and unseen bear down—
down so hard all the
brain cosmos no longer
remain barred and then
will never never stop birthing
We came on a boat
of cocktail sauce the eternal shrimp
all us choke
insatiable we come to inhale your earth and consume the air of your people
mmmmmmmm ahhhhhhhhh
your people who’s sweat wets ancient clod fertilized with the iron of layered blood
stored
and storied
still dusting the quiet countertops and tables of your children
and we come for a nibble of you
your story and we pay you
to fill us
please fill us
with what we eat for and sail and consume
but can never land on
Even though we land on your land
leave our waste at your door
take take
your natural wonder your nurtured history your way
and we make it ours to play and pounce on
and then we sail away clutching a once noble emblem of yours’
years of loving years
of laboring dissolved now
to kitsch & capitol
Arrivederci!

TWO

October 18, 2023

Moon shadows are the most terrifying sort they double sometimes triple in front of you crossing paths I run to outrun the stolid phantoms they float on ahead and laugh those sanguine fish-less fishermen in carny waltz home own early drunken hours they saunter tilt sway collide and soon you come to admit this whole bitter time you are the one chasing your very own shadows so come morning before bright I lace up again and though I pray I strain harder— the spirits win they `remain just racing faster into what is trapped what is already passed something in this black cycle isn’t whole I run to fill holes to make right what went wrong and rescue all it was that brought me here to this enervating loop de loop de loop I wake up for another round I get up this morning I clear my stale throat this morning there is a new moon no moon no shady troupe about I never do this but this time I change my old route just to test the dark ghosts who I can hear the adumbration of though I can’t conceive ahead so I look back and so far back those shadows can’t keep pace

Me, alone is always contrary. Please
leave me alone.
Please give me rest. But please
please, please, don’t
banish me-
all
the way
to myself.
That din unending in rabid vigil, it
loops and stirs and
loops
fermenting infection
cementing mistaken,
askew, fantastically amiss
tales.
Then tortured by a torrid famine from
a self infrangible and firm
I gasp for my name.
Denizens of the night, unite!
The implacable coterie of
round the clock wakers,
who shake the dark hours
with mind bending
tunnels. Clandestine wanderers
of witching hours—
congregate to the place
where sundials expire
and behold the throng
of your kind.
Nourish inside all the
black nodes and be relieved
and worship free,
free from speaking only
that which passes in the
light. Know the diurnal life
is only half.
While those eyes, eyes
resisting rest, expand
the given hours and sit
upon the whole— the
compound truth,
be it full of sores, is fuller still—
Of breath and death,
above and below,
the effusive day with
our elucidative night.
It came to pass
it must always be coming to pass every
minute you are inhaling you must bring
much good to pass more more
more you must bring your more to pass
to be good
there is no more— yet your
limbs are in perfunctory stasis
while your heart is in starvation
your hollow more takes away more
than it contributes and
the thing in its path cannot be filled
by you or through you because
your empty inner knows only paucity
not peace
and you come inside and find
your trough is bare and
sometimes filled with glossy tacky
wounds open and unmoored still
canker the pus fermenting
so the feeble air you
ooze is not more—
just your ill exhale
the only real more to give
to the passer the one who sits by you
is not a performance—it is bellowing
below—an inherent fulgid flame
requiring quiet still corridors so it remains
lit and unswayed and then it thaws you
and bestows more— your calm to pass.
Moon shadows are the most
terrifying sort
they double
sometimes triple in front of you
crossing paths
I run to outrun the
stolid phantoms they
float on ahead
and laugh
those sanguine fish-less fishermen
in carny waltz home
own early drunken
hours they saunter tilt
sway collide
and soon
you come to admit
this whole bitter time
you are the one chasing
your very own shadows
so come morning before
bright I lace up again and
though I pray
I strain harder—
the spirits win they
`remain
just racing faster into
what is trapped what
is already passed something
in this black cycle isn’t whole
I run to fill holes to
make right what went
wrong and rescue
all it was
that brought me here to
this enervating loop de
loop
de loop
I wake up for another round
I get up
this morning I clear my
stale throat
this morning there is a new moon
no moon
no shady troupe about
I never do this but
this time I change
my old route
just to test the dark ghosts who
I can hear the
adumbration of though
I can’t conceive ahead
so I look back
and so far back
those
shadows can’t
keep
pace

ONE

November 21, 2022

There is no welcome into an easy gate no stride into a paved bed of grain into a vat of all heap. Reap comes from a wicked rotting log it crowds all the compass roads you have to go to and hollow the rank gestation of death to pass. There are no exclamation points at the end of tread trails.

There is no welcome into
an easy gate no stride into
a paved bed of grain into
a vat of all heap.
Reap comes from a
wicked rotting log it crowds
all the compass roads you
have to go to and hollow
the rank gestation of
death to pass.
There are no exclamation
points at the end of tread
trails they only chaperone
the tired excavator.
I’ve noticed we like eating our seed-corn
our main course always right now
now is the moment I want to eat
and be fed
I don’t want to get full later
sowing kernels is long and the day
stretches out gray and un-new and
the ticking is laden a harsh waiting
room so I eat the seed now and
my inners grumble and speak to
me and tell me there is no other way
no other way
for me to get full on this seed alone
but the ground is fallow and my
breath burns early in
sardonic morning air how can I trust
this seed this
dry acrid speck— there is
there is One who says it will supply plenty
but how many empty minutes does
a person sit
with nothing
do fools wait— - but
I have no choice
I cannot be filled on seed alone
and so I bend
and kneel and I make
a tiny space to
cradle the mite
meager in all that I have to offer
I long to escape feeling
small
a glib glob of nothing
nothing to see
nothing to hear
here
Big. I want to be
Huge
fleeing indigence and landing
loud on echelons of ME.
Though, I once outside saw snow
faint
imperceptible flakes
nothing to see
nothing to hear
here
A humdrum hour passes— —
then heaps
still puny particles
falling yet mass
sheaths of sound-less snow.

And One Eye is Weeping

February 8, 2022

prelude—

I’ve been told there is a genesis poem, a poem igniting the poet within. I don’t know if this is a real thing. I have stayed breathing, been brought back to life, and have been pressed to create my own combination of words because of

so many writers within so many mediums.

However, there does happen to be a poem, a poem perennially inside me, which continues to bring balmic light to mine and all my observed, conflicted existence— this is Robert Frost’s “Birches”— the boy who swings toward heaven from a birch tree until the tree can’t bear any more and then is set back down again.

“That would be good both going and coming back,”

He writes.

This swinging pendulum of back and forth

from the infinite to the finite, is our mortality.

While “one eye is weeping,”

we have an other eye rejoicing.

Frost’s now axiomatic wisdom has filled me with the comfort that we are reliably nestled within our world of binary systems, the reality of all things existing in a single body of opposition, all things compound into one— light & dark, peace & war, joy & pain, courage & fear, life & death, faith & doubt, tension & rest, complete & incomplete.

Our reactionary mind sees these polarities as contradictory, but the interactions occurring somewhere between the polemical ends, ignite heat— these dualities beget creation. This push and pull, back and forth, both going and coming back, all happening within the dyad,

is where I find life— in continuum.

Here we are, a heap on the tray of viable existence which resides atop an earthly fulcrum, and we are learning to adeptly stable ourselves, leveling our position, centering ourselves amidst the pull of opposing sides. But maybe we can relax a bit, breathe easy and breathe full, knowing we are right where we are supposed to be—

in the balance of a bounded bloc of necessary counterparts,

our life, our planet, our experience, our land in two’s.

As the swinger of birches himself proclaims,

“Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”

I can’t seem to get away from writing about this reality of duality. And if you choose to read further, my hope is you will feel more comfort, rather than discomfort, within this balance.

They who Beget

September 27, 2016

I just had a new baby. It’s a she. She is my fourth child and I named her Frances Gale Red, we call her Francie Gale. Gale is my maternal grandmother’s name…actually Gail Wood is my grandma’s name, I changed the spelling a bit… and this piece of information is not at all relevant to what I’m writing about.

But my grandma is, she is relevant. I named my Francie after her because Gail Hilton Wood is a woman that I so much admire and a woman that so much inspires.

This is most likely my last baby. I never thought I would get that finalized feeling, but I feel it. And I’m mourning a bit, this end of an era.

And pained a bit to realize its only now that I’ve finally gotten it. I’ve finally recognized, uncovered, the unbelievable miracle of it all, this bringing new life into the world.

Like all the dull fog has been lifted and I see now how extraordinary a thing it is to beget life. To feel the flesh of a human being lifted into my arms, flesh that was enlivened within my own flesh, flesh that moves and beats and respires and feels and even connects with not just my flesh but my most entire inner self, to the point that my most entire self would continue to give up all, just to keep this other being alive and beloved.

And to witness this transformation of soul, my soul coupled with the transformation of my flesh, all in support of continuing life, giving life to this new human, has, in a word: astonished. I’m astonished with the life women are capable of giving and sustaining.

I walk around with new vision, seeing women so differently than I used to see them. I walk around with this overflow of gratitude and pride for the female sex and more than I anything I want our sex to see and feel of themselves what I see and feel for them. I want women to actually see the reality of who they are. I want them to be astonished with themselves and with one another.

I am in especial admiration for the women who surround me, the women who’ve sacrificed for me— women like my mother and aunts and grandmas and mother-in-laws and sister-in-laws and intimate friends, and even my women ancestors I’ve not met, who’ve gone before me. I feel their encouragement, their support, their past experience, urging me forward, forward to partake of the cup woman have access to, the cup that foretells that they who lose their life, shall surely find it. That sacrifice of both body and soul, and of time and mind and effort and sleep and desire, all that sacrifice ends up filling us full of so much life. Of so much love. A cup that truly has been filled well above its brim, running well over. We who lose our lives, gain so much life in response.

And I’m saddened that for quite awhile I haven't seen this web of interconnectedness that lives amongst us women. There are times we compete and collide and critique one another as women, but that's all farce and futile when pertaining to the truth of how we really are bound.

But now that I’m so aware, now that i’ve been astonished, I hope to convivially encourage and conjoin the woman in my path, pointing to our incredible life giving abilities and praising our soul sustaining efforts. Our experience has indeed collected us into a sisterhood that has not only been earned but is absolutely essential.

There is a secure power found in the comfort of communion with those women who have led us, those who endure with us, and those who follow behind.

And to my own that follow, my Margot and my Francie Gale,

I am eager to expand upon them the noble courage and warm approbation that accompanies a woman’s ability to beget and sustain life;

and I am eager to receive them into this marvelous fellowship of those who overcome, those who partake, and in return, those who become overwhelmingly and graciously filled.

*Draped Seated Woman*. Henry Moore 1957,58

This Stuff of Heaven

July 8, 2016

This summer felt like just another summer with just another Powell trip. I’d been to Lake Powell a gazillion times, dating back long enough to memories unremembered.

And over the years, the lake had somewhat lost its lure.

Like New Yorkers who apathetically pass by supernatural skyscrapers each day—

or Parisians peering out into the landscape, seeing beyond their iconic Eiffel Tower—

or Californians who no longer detect the briny, beachy air they breathe.

Like them, I had become impassive about a place, remarkable in its offering; I’d ignored the powerful immensity and native spirit exhaling from that lake.

But this year, this summer, I woke up. I saw Lake Powell as it was. My prosaic familiarity changed into awe, awe for the lake, awe for the change it created in me, and also reverence and gratitude for the change it allowed within those whom I call my best friends – those whom I love most – my family.

All of us arrived already exhausted, weary and on-edge. All of us struggling with the typical life rigor of providing for bare necessity. All of us striving to hone ourselves and our children, ardently attempting to refine and become better. And most especially, all of us with our unique infirmities, weighing on us so individually –

My sister-in-law, learning to navigate life as a new widow, without my brother. And the relentless strain of raising 4 little-ones all alone, with all the anxiety, and all the exhaustion, on top of all the grief.

A close brother, open about being gay, and apprehensive about how he is being received, and fearful how the religious chasms lingering between him and his loved ones might alter their relationships—

Impeding health scares, threatening test results, bodies waning, pulled down from the gravity and heaviness of life.

Brothers and husbands and sisters and wives and parents, all stricken with unique physical, mental and spiritual ailments, in manifest as we grow older. All of us trailing difficult histories. And all of us clenched with particular anxieties and worries about the imminent future.

And with our particular load, or perhaps in part of our individual pain, there felt a wedge, a wall around each of us, the wall pronouncing, “All of you don’t understand how hard and rough and relentless life has been for me.” Each one of us eager to feel validation for our personal life struggle.

But as the days went on, I noticed a sort of mutation occurring in all of us. The lake and the red rock and the sun (and the lack of cell service) seemed to cleanse us of all that exterior load that had been so suffocating. That wall, that wedge had dissipated, dissolved of its divisive forces, as if the lake itself possessed a quiet power, gradually absorbing our anger and our hurt.

And we were left standing as we were, real in our vulnerability, and somehow freed from the laden stones weighing previously upon us. It became suddenly so clear, so easy to see each person authentically, so accurately. Like the honest intent and nature of our hearts were exposed. And it was compelling how similar our hearts were! We all had been wanting and needing and gasping for the same things: to feel loved, and to be heard, and to find peace.

We then experienced a unity and a communion which blossomed and fed and filled us. The bland, cordial kindness was replaced with truest interest and care, the awkward conversation turned to dancing and laughing and punching wars with my brothers that left my arm blue for over a week. The grandpa and uncles filling in for missing fathers, and the love-filled teasing extended to those feeling out of place. Easing the pain, filling the pain that had once been our source of separation.

The rest of the week we soaked in that place, that milieu, filled with beautiful repose and comfort – sweet soluble comfort.

We had arrived, depleted and floundering, anxious to find solutions and answers and reprieve from our very individual life struggle; when finally it was realized,

we understood,

we were the solution, the answer to one another’s ailing all along.

We were each other’s solution.

It was there in Lake Powell, engulfed beneath towering walls of sandstones, it was there the walls of differing opinion, and heartache, and belief came crumbling down and it was there that I saw the necessity of combined hearts, the need to nurture and care and feed one another. The peace, the rest, we are all pleading, longing, aching for was, and is, only found in each other.

If a family of much the same upbringing can become so disjoined, think of all the variances within our culture, our nations, our world and how we can seem so far removed from one another’s frame of reference and how it is so easy to misunderstand one another and be misunderstood. We will disagree and have differing beliefs and will be influenced individually and separately by our unique life circumstances. But dwelling on these differences and disengaging from one another and even despising one another is not only diminutive,

but it is entirely fruitless.

Our peace, our hope, our rest is found in the comfort of one another.

We are each other’s solution.

We are all pleading, and longing and aching for rest, for joy, for peace and for love –

And we may just find that this stuff of heaven, is already in our midst. It is right in front of us, it is found in one another.

““A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ —a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.””

— Albert Einstein (1950)

Photo by Julie Blackmon: Homegrown, "Night Movie."

feeding our lonely hearts

March 18, 2015

We are social beings. We all need each other. Aristotle said so.

His notion of Zoon Politikon claims that we, the Human species, are by nature social, relational animals who realize our fullest existence within a community. This polis or community provides a space that allows us to flourish in human capacity. In contrast, its opposite: an isolated space, a private realm of survival, is full of lonely individuals with dissipating potential and futile contentment.

My mom used to quote to us kids (there's 7 of us) this one John Donne quote, all in an effort to help us get outside ourselves. And apparently it's stuck with me this long so...well done Madre. This 17th c. poet and clergy man wrote:

“No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

— John Donne

We all experience life side by side. We all go through this place together, this place that is so jointly lovely and so tiresome, so exquisite and so dreadful, so edifying and at times, so harrowing.

And yet despite this grand, collective encounter with life, despite our being part of a social species,

we, so many of us, often go at life all alone.

Be it our staunch independence or our pride or our fear, it's probable we are living day to day detached in a solitary sphere of exclusion. We sometimes fail to see all the heads bobbing in the ocean all around us, doing exactly what we are doing, just staying afloat.

I recently finished reading the American classic, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, written by Carson McCullers. It is a book completely beautiful and sad and disappointing. And the characters are so lonely, so morally isolated and it seems all they desire is to be heard, to be understood. For somebody to just get them.

And their hearts are beating with passion. Beating for music, for friendship, for civil brotherhood, for freedom. But because these characters sense their hearts’ beat entirely alone, their pulsing passion for life fades.

Perhaps it is Miss McCullers wise, moral setting voice, heard through her character Doctor Copeland, (the ‘Negro doctor’) as he warns,

“My advice to you is this. Do not attempt to stand alone…the most fatal thing a man can do is stand alone.”

We are a society plagued by isolation. And with technology ever increasing our social engagement is ever decreasing. Depression, anxiety, fear, paranoia, suicide, all emanate from our proliferating loneliness. And the more insular we become, the more decrepit a people, a nation, a planet we become. No man is an island, and if we pretend we can make it through all of this as such, the callous and cold quiet will cause us to wither and atrophy into lightlessness. Only the warmth of association, of communion can keep all of us going.

I was recently inspired by a brother-in-law of mine/ high school football coach, who while speaking in front of a large audience hearkened to the Supreme call to "Feed my sheep" with great emotional urgency (NT, John 21:17.) He encouraged us to, “C’mon lets all of us together, grab one another and make it through this place together, no one left behind. We can make it only if we do it together.” In that moment I felt a humble power and solid strength from and for all who surrounded me; like all would be fine, as long as we linked limbs and made our way together.

By embracing vulnerability, by honoring weakness, by cultivating the strengths in ourselves and especially others, this is how we walk in oneness. It is seeing us all as human, with a garden of magnificent variances that aid in the mass whole of mankind. It is being less of a skeptic and a parochial cynic, and becoming more an observer of light and goodness in all our associations, this is what promotes life. When we open our eyes, our arms, our hearts, when we see and feel and feed others, it is inevitable that our own space, our own sphere will amass into a brightness communaly abundant, and full of imperishable warmth.

““If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.””

— Mother Teresa

(Photo by Daniel Naudé: Regina Nelani. Barkly East, Eastern Cape, 27 July 2010)

The Bountiful Body

September 8, 2014

We live in a culture where women are constantly modifying the body they were naturally born with. There’s a relentless emphasis to morph, sculpt, tone our womanly form to look like a twelve year old boy, wax our innately hairy bodies, enhance female areas, color our hair, inject or even alter our faces, suck out “imperfections,” I could keep going, but I’m really quite tired of it all.

Ultimately, we are conditioned to feel a sense of lack when we view and observe our bodies. There’s always an urge to improve upon what is naturally there. And there is an exhausting focus and energy given to enhancing our perceived lacking selves. We end up trying to fit into an “idea” of who we should look like, and thus fall ever short to that ideal. Of course we are then left to look at ourselves with constant disappointment. So sad!

In reality, we should restructure our homogenized concept of the ideal to refit an individualized admiration for our unique selves.

“It is a revolutionary act to embrace who we are, just as we are.”

— Dr. Jessica Zucker

Indeed, it is quite radical to release ourselves from this conditioned obsession to “fix” our bodies. Our shallow visual relationship with our body can and should become more comprehensive and bonded.

Often we feel it is best to relinquish all feeling and sentiment toward our physical frames and direct all our energy and attention entirely to our inner selves; but this is not the answer. We never should become impassive and aloof from our bodies. We must continue to care for, respect, honor, nurture, and sustain them—these structures marvelously formed from matter. Because it is through our bodies that we experience life. And the more disconnected from our bodies we become, the more disconnected we become from life.

In the words of a past university professor of mine:

“The body is the cup in which to drink the world.”

— George Handley, "Home Waters"

And when we acknowledge this one true fact, our focus shifts from befitting an unavailing ideal, to honoring an already present body, a body that is constantly giving, constantly enabling. We then come to admire the nuances that make up our own body, the differences that separate our form from all the others. And instead of tweaking, breaking, altering, criticizing our physical forms, we desire to give back to this gratuitous body that allows us to inhale and exhale life.

When our attention to bodily appearance converts to bodily appreciation, we are then awakened to the wide expanse of life that is pumping, respiring, moving all about us. And this process of body nourishment and cultivation becomes circuitous, as our bodies in return, allow us to engage more completely with all of life’s interactions. It is a bountiful transaction rooted in giving and receiving, and giving and receiving again.

Discovering and admiring our individual forms requires a shift in how we view ourselves and how we view others. And this can take time, especially because our culture will continue to condition our minds with its habitual, hollow message of glorified "ideal" body imaging. It will take active and diligent persuasion, personal persuasion, to nourish ourselves with bodily appreciation and cultivation. But as we begin to enjoy our variations, the parts of us that differentiate us from everybody else, we will also begin to discover and delight in all the diversity existing among us. And our concept of beauty will become far- reaching, expansive and abundant, and our confidence will grow unbounded... when we come to realize how bountiful a life our body is giving us.

(Photo: "Deep Sea Diver" by Brad Tennant)

What the Darkness Taught

August 19, 2014

Growing up in the Utah high desert I constantly complained about the summer heat and the contrasting frigid winters. I longed to get out and find a milder climate. And I did. London, Hawaii, then Oregon all brought calmer weather. Snow days were rare, or even obsolete; and summers were in a word, idyllic.

But in lush gorgeous Portland, for the five years we were there, I felt wet most of the time. Yes, the temperatures rarely dropped below the mid 40’s, yet the whole world seemed so soggy. But mostly, beyond all the sogginess, I ached for the sun. No living organism is bright and alive without the sun; basic biology tells us this. It was normal that I wanted my being to feel warmth. Light. Joy.

And yet the world kept going and we all stayed alive somehow, despite the absence of light. But the life and light I had inside started to fade, diminish. The darkness outside made my insides all dark too.

There existed in the landscape an almost unearthly physical splendor, and the people, and land, and food, and culture were genuine and real and true. And these things brought me light. Portland was alive and rich in so many ways. And I fell in love with it all, a deep love. Yet there was this perennial hole within me, and I was never fully alive, in bloom. I needed more sunlight.

And now we have moved back to the desert, my place of beginning. And this desert heat envelopes the land of where I live. And it is curious how before, that heat was so undesired, so disruptive.

And now, because of experience, because of opposition, I soak in the energizing light and the warmness of the sun. Allowing my soul, both body and spirit, to absorb its life giving rays. The heat nourishes my once dampened, dire self and the light lifts my mind, my soul, even my freckles, freckles that had gone missing for awhile.

And even in the long icy winters the sunlight streams through my windows and I can actually feel of its warmth.

So long this light had gone missing. But I now perceive how that period of darkness was imperative. It was there in the darkness that I recognized how precious, how desirable light was and is to me. Without light’s absence, I was incapable of seeing light’s life preserving gifts. The darkness taught me to cultivate light, to feel exceptional appreciation and joy when I am touched by its warmth.

As humans we endure misfortune, pain, distress. And our lights, once so illuminating, begin to fade. Yet, we must remember that within darkness, in pain, in suffering we are acquiring the ability to ascertain the light, the moments of joy and life and beauty. And then when the cold darkness weakens and we feel warmness reaching through, we will abide in its comfort like never before. We will have enlightened aptitude in perceiving the wonder and joy that does exist. And this keener awareness will allow life to feel even sweeter than ever before. All because the darkness taught us.

(Image via avogageforever)

Loving it Here

July 16, 2014

Living in the moment, or living more "horizontally" as I like to put it, has been at the heart of this blog. And the purpose in reconciling with this concept, again and again, is so that we learn to attach ourselves to the life we are living--right now.

And to immerse our entire selves into every day and every moment and every encounter, with the help of our innate sensory abilities. Using these bodily abilities enables us to pursue an astonishingly more exciting, fulfilling, joyful continuation of living.

Life beyond sheer survival.

“We think through the mind, but we live through the body... who delights in color and music and texture and fragrance—and the five senses are our windows onto this world of sight and sound and taste.
...Certainly, it makes more sense to see the bodily senses as portals of joy.”

— Terryl Givens, Fiona Givens

I'm sure many of you readers are familiar with the site, or feed, Humans of New York. I recently fell across this post of a daughter with her mother and was overwhelmed by the simple sagacity it contained.

This lovely woman embodies horizontal living. She radiates life and hope to all of us who are exhausted and laden with much surrounding ache and distress. She shows succinctly that there is enduring wonder and light. Even here in this place.

There is much to be glad of, if we only are keen enough to notice.

Here is the post:

““What’s your favorite thing about your mother?”

”She loves life more than anyone I’ve ever known. I hope she doesn’t mind me telling you this, but recently she’s had some health problems. And her health got so bad at one point, she called me and said: ‘I was starting to wonder if there was any reason to go on. But then I had the most delicious pear!’”
”

— Humans of New York : Saturday 28 June 2014

Moving through Time

July 2, 2014

I think about time a lot. How time is perpetually moving, never stopping. And how our lives keep going because time keeps going, even when it feels like we want it all to just slow down

or even pause,

just so we can catch our breath.

And perhaps time’s most enigmatic, ethereal revelation is recognizing time past, life past, bewildered where it all went

and how we are so changed from life then, and life now.

I’m certain we all experience a golden nostalgia for life long ago, we perceive it to be simpler, less painful. Perhaps it is the romantic quality of the dated film or photograph; but most likely it is our memory so selective, emitting the mundane and the unpleasant, reminiscing mostly the good.

And sadness is created as we watch a life in its early stages, in blissful hurdle over sprinkler heads, grazing in dandelion summers …unaware of life’s imminent misfortunes waiting ahead.

Returning to the county I was raised in, causes me to frequently bump into individuals that were part of my life before marriage and kids: friends, neighbors, acquaintances, teachers, etc. And it catches me unaware. Like my two worlds are succumbing to a brazen collision, a crash of life then and life now.

Somehow, somewhere I have created a canyon. A chasm in time separating my life, even my being, into compartments of existence. But this isn't reality. We are, in reality, a composite entity of every experience, every encounter, every relation.

“Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was — only is. ”

— William Faulkner

Einstein, the man who saw time as relative, rather than time absolute, said, "the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one." Timelessness allows us to sojourn beyond parts, phases, stages and into an ensemble of life experience.

As adults who once in youth, frolicked in that freedom of summer light, that past felicity and respite will never be long lost. It remains constantly within; it is ours to carry and sustain through eventual winters ahead.

And we may now have to hurdle obstacles far more daunting than sprinkler heads as time keeps moving; but I'm certain that when we look back at the now, we will remember the good and emit a lot of the unpleasant, just as we did before. And we will recognize how we have bloomed throughout it all.

As we connect the dots, seeing the continuity of ourselves and of our fellow travelers through time, we will apprehend the totality and the grandeur subsisting in every individual life. And no more sadness will arise from remembering what once was, because we will comprehend each life in gratitude and in genuineness: a life consummate in whole, unfragmented and eternal.

Original Food

June 10, 2014

In keeping within the vein of what is real, I have been pleased with our national culture’s current discourse concerning food and the significance of returning our society’s eating habits back to, what I call, real food. The authentic, substantial stuff that is naturally and originally grown and sown from the ground.

Food documentaries, novels, articles, blogs all have gained increasing momentum within our culture exposing the detriment of our attitudes and habits regarding food. We have created discussion that is disrupting the hegemonic basis of an industry that has little concern for our actual well-being; and we are taking control over what we and our families ingest.

Yet, we are a nation still caught within a spectrum of diet fads and confusing food labels; how might we navigate what is genuinely beneficial for our bodies? To be sure, entire novels and movements have ensued in response to this single question, but there is one simple tenet that I am motivated to adhere to when I am discerning how to feed my body and this is it: is this food really real?

So much of our food is grown and processed and pumped with pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, hormones, sugar and synthetic who knows what. And before I eat, or go out to eat, I want to know if the food I am consuming and my kids are consuming is unhampered, real, original.

Of course there is that Portlandia episode where before ordering chicken at a local restaurant, the customers desire to know the name of their chicken (Colin) and his family and details of his life on the farm (and p.s. this portrayal of Portlandians isn’t as exaggerated as you might think!)

Eating whole and good and real needn’t be this radical. But there is an inherent custody of an awareness to what is going inside our bodies. Our bodies that live and breathe and feel and act and react and experience the life we are all living. And the fuel we are absorbing to keep going in this life can greatly enhance or detract from the overall experience.

“We are part of nature. We depend on it. It’s really what is giving us our nourishment and we need to treasure [it] (food), we need to take care of the land. That’s a beautiful pleasure of life.”

— Alice Waters

I think this short video is quite wise. And so I wanted you to see it. It was created by Michael Pollan, food journalist and author of pivotal works such as, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In the Defense of Food.

This simple video has influenced my own cognitive regard and physical choices in relation to food, and I hope it conveys more clearly my point. Eventually there is a hope in which our entire culture will value food that is wholesome and real above that which is cheap and easy. And eventually our society will free itself from its bondage of food issues and will more readily relish in the celebration and joyful life giving source that food actually and really is.

(Photography above by Adam Ferguson for The New York Times)

Staying Alive

May 16, 2014

In motion all day. Never stopping.

Night time hits. All kids asleep. Finally.

Absurdly quiet. Aching to veg. First moment alone with myself.

I let my haggard body sink, melt, dissolve into the cushions of my couch.

House Hunters International is on. It's always on this time of night. TV power -- click... And I feel freedom.

But not really.

Because I realize that all day I have been nourishing, mending, loving, feeding brains and bodies and spirits outside of my own. And my brain, body, spirit is hungry for care. And although so much of me desires to be swallowed up whole into that couch, there is more of me that wants real nutrition. The kind of nutrition that will feed my entire soul: brain, body and spirit.

I pick my body, all exhausted, off the couch, and put on walking shoes and a jacket. I leave the house, detaching myself from that world in there; that world that I love, but a world that is always in need of my perpetual attention.

I walk in silence for awhile; then eventually put in ear-buds. A book, a talk, a song, awakens me from all of the vacuous monotony. I drink in the real sustenance I have been yearning.

Some days I find it in writing, or reading, running, breathing, bending, creating good food, or eating good food, photo taking, photo editing, learning, really learning, listening, befriending, remembering.

All of which require action on my part.

This kind of nurturing, this kind of freedom, takes effort. And sometimes I just feel completely out of effort. So achieving this can be admittedly hard.

But only in the beginning. It's hard in that first movement, that first choice that gets us off the couch. But once we are in motion, we find we are absorbing it all so intently. We must have been so thirsty.

And when nourished in this manner day by day, we become more eager and we realize our lives are richer.

Every day we must urge our tired beings to do something, at least one thing, that seems hard but that is feeding us personally. Something which inspires, challenges, arouses, enlivens us.

We will then recognize we are revived, restored, more awake. We will have more to give because there is more of us that can give.

All because we made the effort to get up and stay alive.

(Photos taken by Laura D'art)

What Really Is

May 6, 2014

My favorite 7 year old, if raising himself, would undoubtedly squander his life to electronic gaming. And perhaps we, my husband and I, make his obsession worse by denying him any gaming units or even any computer time in our home.

I just want his unadulterated brain to stay sharp and alive and motivated.

So we regularly discuss the why behind our rules. Because he is incessantly asking.

And it always comes down to the same phrase, “Buddy, we just want you to focus on what is real. And video games aren’t real."

After pounding this concept of “real” into my kids’ heads, I have attempted to instill a keener focus on what’s “real” into my own life, and subsequently exclude time and energy spent thinking or giving to things that are of lesser realness.

So I hate being late for things, like really hate it. And I was late for one of the kid’s pediatric checkups the other day and was in panicked fluster topped with heated anger at my family, all because we were about to walk in that office door 8 minutes late.

And then, as if somebody had climbed into my brain and ignited a “reality” synapse, I suddenly understood what was real in this situation; but most importantly WHO was real.

If the doctor’s appointment needed to rescheduled, so be it. No damage rendered.

But these kids sitting behind me in the car were and are everything. Their well-being is everything. And I was hurting their souls with my anxious fury. I shifted to what was real: them. And the things that weren’t, melted and faded, and it all seemed okay.

Our world is obsessed with the portrayal of fake realities, or idealized images of idealized realities. We can even promote idealized realities of our own lives whether through social media, or even social interaction. But the double consciousness we gain by surrounding ourselves with all this fakeness is entirely detrimental. What I mean is that we see all these idealized life portrayals and an emphasis on aspects of life that seem so real. But when we have a sudden loss of something so real. Like a loved one. Or a relationship lost. We begin to decipher and discern what things are of great and real value. And what aren’t.

It becomes strikingly apparent that realness is grounded in people. In seeing goodness in people. And giving goodness to people. It is found in relationships, in connections, in attachments.

Deciphering what is real comes back to the last post on our motives. If our motives are self-elevating, self- aggrandizing than we aren’t dwelling in what is genuine and true. It’s at times difficult to detach this from reality though, because our society and culture praise self-promoting success.

But when we are motivated by love for this world and for the people inside it, we find stableness. Because we are standing in realness. We must ask ourselves, do we get degrees, jobs, homes, cars, because we desire to bless and enjoy our interactions with mankind? Or do we do it to impress mankind? Do we exercise, clean, read, write, study, preach, shop, cook, weed, plant, because of our love of this world and love for humanity? Or do we do it to impress humanity?

I was walking past my college campus a few weeks ago and noticed the harried, worried nature of all those students. I was so one of them. Head down, bogged down by my sole individual load, tunneled into my own, massive life burdens. And how inane it all seems now that I couldn’t see past that paper, or exam, or assignment. It all seemed so big and real at the time. Oh that GPA seemed so real.

And then came life. And love. And pain. And grief. And beauty beyond the boundaries of language. And I reminisce with regret that I failed in recognizing the actual realness existing in the students and teachers I came in contact with. And I so regret and so wish my emphasis would have been less on the fleeting scores and more in my pursuit of enhancing the world we tarry in. I missed it.

And so we all are living in the weedy mucky stuff below, because it takes constant daily weeding just to survive… no matter what season of life we are in, be it school, parenthood, etc.

But if we can peer through it all and really perceive what is real,

or rather who is real,

we will find we aren’t missing it, missing life. Cause nothing will give us greater pain in the end than the realization that it all passed and we were blind to what and who were actually real.

Contrastingly, nothing will bring us greater fulfillment than discovering who is.

(Top image by the incredible Christina Thurston)

(Bottom cinemagraph via Anne Street Studio)

Thief of Joy

April 24, 2014

I need Yoga. Because I am anxious and uptight and I can get a bit extreme. Yoga is the only way I can actually “keep calm and carry on." The strenuous postures and flow supported by the continual inhale and exhale, soothes my brain and permits it to find rest. I’d be maniacal, or technically more maniacal, without it.

But this post isn't about how wonderful and healing yoga is, although, yoga is very much those things. It’s about how I was able to turn something so therapeutic and restorative, in this case, yoga, into a destructive, even corruptive activity.

I was just getting back into my yoga practice after having baby #3 and felt pretty uppity in my yogic capabilities. Until this early morning class I went to, where I was noticeably the outcast to this ardent, kinda cult-like, morning group. I set my mat next to a woman who likewise had just had a baby and who was still in the stages of early nursing. As we began our sun salutations and ventured further into the class, eventually contorting our bodies into floating poses and back-bends beyond normal human ability, I quickly saw this woman was incredible. She was so rhythmic and serene, so completely malleable and light in her movement. By the end of class, I realized I had spent my entire hour comparing my abilities with hers, that I hadn't even savored my precious time to myself. I couldn't let go of the thought that she had outshone me. That I was less than her. I walked out that door entirely defeated.

But anyone who knows anything about yoga, knows that it is supposed to be an individualistic, healing practice. The movement and breath and postures are meant to cleanse and nourish your own body. You learn to feel and hear what your own body needs. Comparing and competing with your neighbor destroys the entire practice. And comparing myself to this woman had most definitely stricken, even corrupted, my own source of nourishment.

There’s this quote by Teddy Roosevelt that can’t escape my thoughts; you've probably seen it floating around Pinterest, you know the one:

Well it’s true. It is. And that’s why I can’t get it out of my head.

Basically any aspect of human life can lose its virtue and power in supporting and sustaining life as it becomes compared and contrasted against another person.

It takes love out of our thoughts

and our hearts,

as we fragment loving, feeling, whole human beings into single abilities, talents, looks, assets.

And then yearning to exceed or advance upon those singular facets.

C.S. Lewis wrote,

We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better looking than others. If every one else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud, the pleasure of being above the rest.
- Mere Christianity

What if we were motivated by love in all things instead?

What if we did yoga out of love for ourselves and for the benefit of those surrounding us. What if love was the driving force, rather than the need to measure up or excel above the next individual….

Start looking at what motivates you to act or to think in the ways that you do? If you are trying to prove something, or be better than the next, you will never find joy.

It will always escape you.

Because there will always be someone smarter, wealthier, wiser, kinder, prettier, faster, stronger, taller, skinnier, etc. But if you are motivated by love you can always reach another person, you'll see the beauty and goodness in yourself and all you come in contact with; in this there will always exist satisfaction and joy.

From this view, we let go of competitive elevation, of degrading or promoting, and we become filled with compassion, confidence. We begin to see ourselves and each other as we are, whole and real and good.

Motionless Movement

April 3, 2014

There’s this book, a favorite of mine, where its passages, ideas, even phrases are randomly brought to surface in my everyday living, but most especially as I compose posts for this blog. It’s a French novel: The Elegance of the Hedgehog, authored by Muriel Barbery. And like most French story-telling, particularly in film and literature, the dénouement, or finale, to the story ends emitting soberness; much unlike our American tradition of happily ever after. However, there is sublime and stirring beauty amidst the soberness, all gained from generally unnoticed yet profound encounters experienced by the protagonists. I dare say, the French promote reality, while us Americans are obsessed with idealities.

Anyways, Paloma, one of the two main female leads, is a 12 year old, burdened with genius and struck with an inability to find purpose in human existence. Living within a family of wealthy pseudointellectuals, Paloma philosophizes that if life is pointless, than it is pointless to be living it. But before entirely giving in, she begins a journal to record “any beauty that there is in the world, things that, being part of the movement of life, elevate us” (Barbery 38). It is her resolved attempt at giving life one more opportunity to prove its purport before ending it.

I mentioned in last week’s post, that I, at times, feel life is more about enduring than enjoying.

And as Paloma, I have made an effort to be more keenly observant of my collision with life.

I want there to be joy amidst the enduring.

And I’m convinced it is found in what Paloma calls “motionless movement”, where we aren’t moving “toward,” but remaining fully present in the moment, grounded, nonfragmented, centered (39, 41). It’s what we have been referring to as horizontal living.

For our futures are concealed from us. And our past is gone from us. And seeking life behind us or beyond us, fragments us from life happening in the now.

And so, in this favorite book of mine, we witness Paloma discover the beauty in everyday movement, and ultimately find an objective for living, even joy-- in this life... throughout the persisting and amongst the enduring.

What follows is a record of her encounter with a moment of motionless movement entitled:

Journal of the Movement of the World No.4
A choir is a beautiful thing

Yesterday afternoon was my school’s choir performance. In my posh neighborhood school, there is a choir: nobody thinks it’s square and everyone competes to join but it’s exclusive….
Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck—it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers’ faces are transformed: it’s no longer Achille Grand-Fernet that I’m looking at (he is a very fine tenor), or Déborah Lemeur or Ségolène Rachet or Charles Saint-Sauveur. I see human beings, surrendering to music.
I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it’s just too much emotion at once: it’s too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I’m no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir. When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful.

Observing and uncovering the beauty in everyday living, and becoming really enraptured with the bounty possible, we become fuller and more complete; we are less fragmented and disjoined. Paloma sought for it and found it. Look for it. And I promise, you too will find it.

Getting Wet

March 26, 2014

A few months ago my 31 year old brother collapsed, without warning, and died. It was an undetected heart arrhythmia. And since then, I’ve had a paradigm shift. A huge one. His sudden departure, from this mortal phase of existence, has caused me to see life so differently. And it has especially caused me to see other’s so differently. Like I notice them more. And I feel of their malady more. At times I am overcome with moroseness for the abundant affliction that persists here. Not just in my familiar circle, where four babies and a loving wife are left fatherless and husbandless, but within all the lives of all of these people. Admittedly, I even question, at times, if life as man is more about enduring, rather than enjoying.

However, accompanying this heightened commiseration for the plight of mankind, is an acquired bravery and courage, courage that I failed to notice existed inside. It’s like there is this true grit that stirs with vigor and eagerness at life yet to be lived. That I am here in this body experiencing loads of incredible and radical emotion, getting soaked by life, by all of it. And to be weighing the amount of good against the bad, or the pain versus the joy, or toil competing rest, is pretty much pointless. Because the point of it all, is to get wet. In other words, it is becoming acquainted with the whole gamut of emotion and sensation and experience.

And when we look around, we realize, everyone else is getting wet too.

Really wet.

In recognizing the communal nature of life rain, we suddenly feel greater strength to not only abide the wetness, but to maybe even sing and dance together in it.

Overall, life is to be lived in, and lived in side by side. It must be felt in all its pain and glory so that whenever this part concludes, whether at age 31 or 101, we will feel entirely rendered and worn out, joyful that we took full advantage of this incredible ride.

*Images of the "Rain Room" exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Manhattan

*Click Here to see an exclusive video of this unbelievable exhibit.

Stuck in the Moment

March 18, 2014

In an earlier post, well actually, this blog’s introductory post, I wrote of the benefit of learning to live more horizontally, and by that I meant living more in the moment by feeling more in the moment. Horizontal living entails greater awareness of the sensory experiences occurring all around us. And in succeeding posts, the goal of this blog has been to help facilitate your ability to access this “horizontal” awareness.

Really being “in” the moment requires our ability to see and feel and touch and taste and hear the ongoing’s of life surrounding us. However, it is our human nature to be one step ahead preparing for future moments; and many times our thoughts are looking behind and dwelling back there, at life already lived. It is quite hard to suspend ourselves from the vertical onslaught of time, and experience a moment contained and exclusive to itself. Yet, if we voluntarily access our senses within a given moment, our senses give us the ability to engage and become absorbed into a span of time where we feel most alive and most connected, integrated throughout the soul and the body.

For instance, I’m rocking my one year old, reading him a book before his afternoon nap. And unintentionally my mind is wandering to the unfinished laundry, and the unachieved run I was probably never going to get in that morning, and oh, I forgot to renew the library books online, and gross, is my leg hair really that prickly? Lucky husband…. And abruptly I pop back to the rocking chair I’m sitting in.

Suddenly I realize that this boy is heavy. He is no longer a baby. He will only get older, heavier, more independent. And I am missing it. I feel overwhelmingly ill that there have been so many instances inadvertently squandered, due to my own disconnection from a beautiful moment with this boy, who is fleeing babyhood, moments never to be regained.

And so I refocus. I begin to feel the tops of his feet all porcelain and smooth. And I smell his newly cleansed, lavender emanating, curly hair. I look into his big brown perfect eyes. And hear his enthusiastic gibberish pointing out familiar animals on pages that we've read a thousand times. And suddenly I’m fully aware. I’m “in” this moment and I am consequently satiated with intense love and happiness for this boy's life that is mine to care for.

Ultimately, when we engage with our senses, we immerse our entire self into a life’s moment and in return we gain greater purpose, connection and life affirmation.

I enjoy reading Michael Gerson’s opinion column he writes for The Washington Post; and recently I read a personal article he wrote, “After my cancer diagnosis, seeing mortality in the near distance.” He remarks on his change in perspective caused by this cancer diagnosis. I love what he notes concerning his “intensification of physical experience;” he writes,

I was fortunate to see mortality in the near distance. As I awaited to learn my fate, I noticed an effect on matter — an odd intensification of physical experience. Things around you offer more friction and hold your attention longer. Commonplace things like the bumps on tree bark. The light filtering through floating dust. The wetness of water. A contrast knob is turned, revealing the vivid pleasures of merely existing.

This heightened awareness applies to strangers in the street, who suddenly have faces. An unsolicited smile, the obvious creases of worry or pain, engage your emotions...All of this is a function of a shifting perception of time. When the days seem limited, we more fully inhabit them. The arrow of time makes decay inevitable — and each moment unrecoverable. So we gain in appreciation for things as they are when we realize they will eventually be otherwise.

It is my issue to readers to participate in this heightened physical awareness, this horizontal experiential style of living where we fully engage ourselves with multisensory consciousness. Practice just feeling the grass underfoot and what that sensation brings. Smell the earth awakening from deadened winter. Go up and touch the buds starting to emerge from barren trees. Look and observe and really hear the emotion of your loved ones, as you engage in seemingly simple conversation.

And suddenly you will be connected to not only the moment, but to the earth you stand on, and the body you live in, and most significantly the people you interact with. And from this connectedness you will experience a more full life. Like Mr. Gerson said, you will begin to “reveal the vivid pleasures of merely existing.”

〰️

BOOK AISLE AT COSTCO

DECEMBER ROOF

THE DEVIL IS THE UNWILLING INSTRUMENT OF GRACE

SAINT ABE STILL PRAYS FOR THE USA

I COULDN'T FIND A WORD {TO E}

WHITE CURLS

ALWAYS DUST

HESED

TRAIL OF MILK

〰️

why are the Beatles so gosh dang good at themselves?

TIMPANOGOS

RED MOUNTAIN LAKE

WITHOUT NUMBER

WE CAME ON A BOAT

ALL THE WAY TO MYSELF

THE INSOMNIAC SHOUT

CALM TO PASS

OLD MOON ROUTE

There is no welcome into an easy gate no stride into a paved bed of grain into a vat of all heap. Reap comes from a wicked rotting log it crowds all the compass roads you have to go to and hollow the rank gestation of death to pass. There are no exclamation points at the end of tread trails.

THERE IS NO WELCOME

I DON'T WANT TO GET FULL LATER

ODE FOR THE SMALL

prelude—