misplaced mama

Three pills of melatonin. Two Tylenol PM’s.  Two cocktails down.  

Three hours later.  I am still up.

Insomnia is torture.

Tonight I might as well do something with my wakefulness.  I pull the laptop on the bed.  The room illuminates blue.

This has never happened to me before.  Once in a while, late in pregnancy, I’d wake to find sleep gone.  But that was usually cured by a handful of warm bowls of cereal.  But now, there is nothing, there is just a blending of my body and the darkness and i observe it all.

Tonight I said if this plagues me again, if I toss and turn and count the thoughts racing from my head and stare out into the window at the dark sky, memorizing the polka dots of constellations, if I found myself kicking my husband awake for company and the pure rage of someone being able to sleep, if I had one more night with open eyes and throbbing head, I was going to just turn on the computer and write until my eyes bled from screen daze and I until my lids dropped shut, heavy and hard.

And as I type I am so tired yet completely and utterly awake.  Wide awake, not alert or focused, my brain is malfunctioning with exhaustion, but I am awake.  I am angry and annoyed and scared and pissed at my snoring husband.  My baby is a timebomb tick, tick, tick, any moment she will wake up and want to nurse and I will nurse her until my nipples are sore and she falls asleep and I am still awake.  Awake.  Writing in this state is near hell.  I’d rather write with nipple clips on and staples through my fingernails and jaggermeister shots funneled into my mouth via beerbong.

As buddha said:  I am awake.   Is this some cosmic sign.  Some divine designer message for me?  Do I learn to rest in sitting up stillness?  Is awake my new sleep?  Is this a sign to go out and be a stripper, a vampire, a truck driver?

I am no buddha, and nobody wants to see me strip.  I don’t like to suck blood that’s not my own.  And I am night blind behind the wheel.  I am just a mama. Of three.  My days are filled with wakefulness, wide awakefull-ness.  Running around, rag in hand, sand in toes, hands in dirt, scribbling life notes on a dried out bum wipe, hoping to post theme hear someday awakefulness.  Tonight.  I need.  To sleep.

I have a four hour road trip to take tomorrow, just me and the girls.  The trip will be canceled if I can’t get to sleep in the next 20 minutes.  I can’t drive on three hours of sleep.  And apparently I can’t sleep on three hours of sleep, either.

* * *

The past two days have been glorious.  I swam in the ocean yesterday.  Collected seaweed on my calf, dried and peeled it off hours later.  That smell of puget sound, the way it wraps around each coil of my hair, comforts me.  My feet soft from walking on sand.  My nose pink and freckled.   My shoulders berry-brown.  Each little girl lightly tanned and happy and tired from tide pool playing and rock climbing and clam digging and crab chasing.  The oldest girl, her and I held hands and braved the waves, went under all the way and came back up spurting up water, hysterically laughing.  

We lounged on a  tapestry and munched on peaches and cherries and dried nori wrapped around slices of avacado.  We chomped on cucumbers and sipped cool lemon water.  We stayed at the beach until the tide came in close to us and then  we hiked out, through green forest.   A snake came out of nowhere and hissed with us for a while.  Mia got bit by some monsterous bug while  picking salmonberries. Then we went and got ice cream: rose flavored.

Today we went to a beach by a lake, closer to our house than the sea. We took our boy dog.  Pasta salad.  Shredded carrots and beets tossed with tahini dressing.  Plums.  Apples.   The girls jumped in the lake, the water cold and satisfying on a humid day.  They ran the long grassy beach and sang songs from Pippi Longstocking.  They swung on the old school swing set and made friends with other kids but bonded as sisters.  Sisters.  That is my gift to them, to each other.  Sleepy summer days as sisters.


This is why I am here.  Summertime and the mountains and the water; lake, rivers and sea, drippy ice cream cones and warm sunny faces.  Eagle accompaniment and tonight, sleepless, listening to a medley from the coyote pups somewhere out there, outside my window, in the woods.

*My eyes are still not tired*. hail mary mother of god what the F is wrong here?

All day long my mind is worked, calculating spending, negotiating who gets what toys, creating meals, figuring out way to entertain or put to sleep or explain the world to them.  But my body is not worked.  I am not sweating and running and twisting and climbing.  I am not doing this things because I don’t want to drag all three of them up the hills with me, the hassle is downright painful but I know I need the discipline to do this.

I am scheming to take a road trip next month to L.A., my foundation, my roots.   I haven’t told him yet, but I plan on spending a good week with my yoga teacher, the first one, the one who reminded me I was a teacher, that I owned my own spiritual space and that space,  if extended, could hold others.  I haven’t taught a real yoga class in years.  And I miss it.  But first I must remember that this is my practice, my health, my medicine.  I have to find the discipline.  To get up and breath and sit and stretch.  

Discipline.

I never really liked that word.  But I get it now.  My friend—a yoga teacher—and I were chatting today.  We were talking about being disciplined.  And how it’s not about getting things done, or feeling the pressure to succeed or creating a force for your children to live under.   It’s about giving yourself gifts, planting seeds so you can harvest the life you long to live.  I realized the only discipline my kids need is to show them I have the disciplined to live healthy; happy and joyful, flexible and open.  I am disciplined to feel the bliss of right now.  In this moment of total middle of the night sleepless exhaustion.  I am writing and somehow I have crept out of the scary drowning sea of insomnia and I am living the moment in creative exploration,.  My words short, artless, messy, but at least I am hear.  Showing up.  Doing something.  

I am going to try to sleep now.  Maybe all I need to do was stop fighting the wakefulness.  Inviting insomnia in because insomnia needed a voice, a space to express.  Okay.  I can feel that, I see that.  Insomnia, you are welcome.  Do what you need to do with me.  I am going to try to sleep right now because tomorrow I have to be coherent to drive my children.  If you still need your space I will continue to write.  But really, I’d like to sleep now.

Goodnight.

An hour later.

The veil at night is thin.  It’s spooky.  It just gets darker and darker and in between those cracks I can see things that aren’t suppose to be there; messy, static, ghost-like things.  Blurs of whites and blacks and shapes.  I smell things.  Like my grandmother’s perfume and my mother’s hand cream and dark beef broth with limes and roses and the smell of my grandfather’s hair, a minty greasy smell.


* * *

Four days later and about a total of six hours of sleep.  Except for last night.  The herbs finally kicked in.  Chinese herbs hand rolled by a Tibetan Medicine Man that was in town.  I take three at night, they make me shudder with their potency.  i take the ones at night with a dropper of whiskey. makers mark.  yum.   I sleep like a baby.

I don’t know what they are but they smell like frankincense and roses.  i feel like i am chewing up powdered essential oils, the petals of flowers, musky bark ground down to a healing essence. I pop them in, small little round pellets and I crunch them up and then I wash them down with a bit (and a bit more) of whiskey.  I don’t drink whiskey really, but I think I might start.  B says it turns him on that I do a shot of whiskey before bed.  I kind of like it, too.


* * *

We are moving.  Again.  Not really by choice.  But the days have been long and hard and to be in the country means to stay in the country, not drive into the city for school and food and work.  .  I am a community person, my dharma is to bring people together, to see them daily, to converse with them and connect with them.  Solitude is not serving us.  Otherwise I suppose we would have made this place work, the back breaking mortgage and what not.

Whatever I say is all bullshit.  I am sad.  I want to keep my home.  But I go with this flow, because to fight it only hurts.  There is blessings in everything.  i am quite sure of that.  lately i have to keep reminding myself of that.  things have been a whirlwind, a massive blast of creatively and destruction, just like all of life, i seem to keep the paradox theme alive.  In each creation something dies.  Whenever something dies, something is brought to life. amen.

 

 

[i am done with thinking this blog is a place for something other than a process like a result of a process.  this blog is the process.  phew.  how come it has taken me so long to remember that?]

* * *

I just took a small sip of something.  Enough to relax into my under-rested body.  There was a time when ujjayi breath  and forward folds were enough to unwind my spool.  Now my practice is a glass of vodka with a mango smashed in it.

 

 It’s a beautiful day.  Really, breathtakingly beautiful. I wake up to sunshine beating through the leaded windows.  It’s a white light, not white-white but yellow-white, a pale yellow white. It’s the color of New. I remember my dream:  huge explosion of reds and oranges and then Snap! Scene cuts: My family and I are happily in the jungle, but instead of legs, we have thick lizard tails.  I pet Mia’s and tel her it’s lovely, scales of greens of fuchsia.  That dream puts me into good spirits, it’s a sign.    The yellow light pouring in, lizard tails, it’s good. It’s a hopeseed in my heartcenter.  It has been a long time since I felt that seed.  

* * *

Z and I are alone in the house.  This happens sometimes once a week, but usually only once a month.  We’ve been rocking out to Cat Power and she is blowing kisses out the window to the dogs and the horse.

I sit down to write.  And then a better thought comes through.

 Outside.   I get in the dirt and pull weeds and plant some flower starts and really try to open my third eye and heart center of All Belief so I can converse with green and white and pink and purple etches wildly blooming.  I still feel so funny, a phony.  After all these years of doing it, trying to truly communicate with the plant realm, I still feel like a crack head doing it.   Somewhere in my heart a tiny bit of me doesn’t believe I can.  This is my job, to erase doubt. Fully.  It’s about not fighting that air stream that invites me in, that vacuum of energy that longs for me to just be taken, to believe in it, to travel with abandon and authenticity.  To question it, to devour it, to hate it, to be angry at it, to savor it,  to love it until there is nothing there but love.  the dirt, the flowers, the sun, the baby.  doubt exits.

* * *

I sit down to write.  And then some not so good thoughts come through.

Somewhere along the way I lost the belief.  WHAT THE FUCK. 

Mirror, Mirror (aka that bitch): Pathatic idealist! You hold optimism to a fault! DUMMY!  How long did you live for the future and now you are here you don’t know what to do!  Typical.  Plus you are fat and have acne and dark circles and your hair is tangled in knots.  And most of the time not you’re so much fun to be around, booorrr-ring!  And what about this house thing?  When you gonna deal with that? Can’t you even figure out how to pay a fucking mortgage?

Me hammering mirror with a two by four until it’s in shards all over the floor:  FUCK YOU!  Motherfuckingdickfuck. Bitch.

Somewhere along the way I forget that there are no mistakes, there are no ‘what we should have done”. there is no salvation or redemption or prosecution.  there is only what we have and in that is  the exact amount of air we need.

I have been writing about this forever and really barely ever live it.  And as of lately not only am I not living in belief, I am living in utter fear.  Fear of the unknown.  Of what will happen.  Of what might be.  Of not being able to survive (literally and figuratively) where this particular thermal, spiral is taking me.  

And then DUH.   Spiral don’t go anywhere.  There is no beginning or end, no left or right.  There is only that air that carries to different levels, different worlds.  I watch flocks of birds; eagles, voltures, hawks, mainly, enter into thermals.  Each on a different level, spiraling upward, wings utterly still, not moving at all.  They travel by the warm air carrying them up through the cold, creating their own special pocket.   They go where it goes. The only choice they made was to believe it and fly into it.

* * *

The place is loud and packed and he is a chicano, close to 60, thick gray hair pulled back into a neat pony.  He’s up from a city down south  to hear Heavyweight  Dub Champions, the extraterrestrial music that surrounds us. 

where do you live? he asks.

off the valley highway. 

1979, it was 1979. he tells me.  I drove through before there was any logging,  fishing, no industry at all, untouched. .  It was the most beautiful place. Eden, whateverthefuck that is,  perfect. Hell, someday I always thought that valley would be my home. 

come up anytime.

hey I have a question for you, he says.  What are you doing with your life right now?  My brother died last week.  Puts things in perspective.  Are you doing what you need to be doing for you, for humanity?

i raised my beer to him.  i’ll drink to that.

* * *

I am here.  In this place, this perfect place.  Mountains are grand and towering, snowcovered magic watching over every shade of green in the book of green.  It is suck-in-your-breath and gasp perfect.  It reminds me how flawed and ugly I am, how needy and righteous and angry and lame.  How complainy and fucked in the head.  How jealous and greedy.  How ego-driven and entitled.  I look around and see perfection and i am like, wow, girl, you gotta just get with it, with this.

How can i come from such perfection, such heart-racing beauty, where rivers cleanse the body and the dirt offers up the most vibrant and essential nutrients and not notice that i MIRROR this perfection in every singe moment.  Even in Her scarred state: logged and cleared and milled and fished and built-upon, this Earth is gloriously, everything perfect, a perfect healer, and perfect planet and then how come i don’t see myself this way? i am not seperate from any of it.

* * *

I am writing in the warm breeze with sunshine pouring down over my shoulders like a liquid balm.  And I am so attached.  So attached to here, to this land,  to all these amazing people who surround me, to the little girls I get to love daily.  I am so attached to the lamb’s ear that grows on the side of the garage and the peonies that are beginning to bloom and the chive flowers that have exploded and the food that stirs just above earth in the food garden.   I am so attached to ideas and things and images and love. i am so attached to one particular pair of boots.

The only thing I am not attached to are these words.  I let go of them so freely, I let them grow, from some kind of love, scattered with fucks and magic and mother-business and then I let go of them, and only hope they land in the heart of exactly where they are meant to be.  These words can never be bound, organized, situated, planned.  They can never be part of a system.   They are the essence of me and this world and once the are breathed, like vibrational compost they transform into something fertile and fresh and nourishing.  I don’t know where they go, but they don’t belong to me.  Never did.

* * *

and then i get it, when i look at them, i just GET IT.

this is truly her energy, ethereal in strut.

felt crown queen at the beach.

papa rocks baby

mia and her soulsister.

nothing but hope.

hippy hula hooper.

 

glowing fuzz head.

three sisters.  i must have done something right somewhere to be trusted with them.  

om. om. om.

Naked. Both of them.

Hair the exact color of bread and butter corn. Hair so close to the color of Malibu sand soaked in sunlight.

Lush soil, fluffy, soft enough to comb through with your fingers, as dark brown as dark brown can be, coconut shell meets espresso bean. Leafy stipped purples, wide green leaves, twisting vines growing up a wire fence.

The little one chases the big one with a hose. The big one runs and squeals. The little one is crying. She chases out of revenge.

* * *

there is no sun quite like this sun, who hides from us from us day after day for so many months, appeasing us with intermittent moments of light; day hikes, beach combing, park picnics, ferry rides. But dark months are dark months for a reason. We never doubt it’s existence, but we wonder what it feels like, what it would be like to draw it down from behind those harrowingly dark and low, marine clouds. There were days when I would reach my arms up try to grab the clouds, separate them with my hands, crack them a apart just a bit, just to say hi sun, missing you.

It’s out of hiding. The past is the past. Life is lived outside now.

* * *

mia: dada, will those sugar snap peas get bigger and bigger?

dada: The’re going to get real big.  especially if we take care of them.  water them.  sing to them.  give them a lil dance.

mia: As big as the world? will they get as big as the world?

dada: wow. That would be big, wouldn’t it?

mama: did you know the world was so big that it never ends, ever?

mia: I know it’s so so so so big. We don’t even need another one! It’s so big! It just keeps circling and circling and getting bigger and bigger.

mama: yup.

mia: mama we could plant another world.

mama: how do we do that?

mia: well we get the specials seeds from chrystal world fairy then we plant them and they grow beautiful trees and houses made like flowers and animals, cause they grow animals too, these seeds grow everything.

mama: cool. Where could we plant those seeds for a new world?

mia: I know! I know! The perfect place! We can grow it at that cupcake place by the bookstore that could be perfect! That would be a wonderful new world home.

* * *

Indeed. Perfect. Cupcakes. And a new world.

* * *

“ Dream-travelers, there is no path, paths are made by dreaming.”

-antonio machado.