misplaced mama

My mom is always really busy doing laundry and so she asked me to be a guest blogger but I don’t know what that is but I said yes. Mom, you are typing. Say that you’re the one typing.

I sat on the chair yesterday and she did yoga and I drew pictures of her with my pen.

Yoga is powerful because it will help you with your breathing and we have to learn to breath. It also helps you because you can practice it anywhere and you don’t need a teacher to learn it. My mom practices at home in her bedroom. Yoga helps my mama with stuff she doesn’t even know about. Like Tree Pose actually helps her learn to talk to trees. You can do it in front of a tree or anywhere really.

Yoga helps my mama’s bones not get all crackly. I was actually born in a yoga studio and I came out like a warrior. And I love warrior pose. (That’s what you say Mama.)

I do like to do yoga but only alone and not with those kids {sula and echo} over there always bothering me and screaming.

It makes me feel happy to watch Mama do yoga and to draw the pictures of her. I love to draw. I want to be an artist and a singer and a writer and a dancer. Dad says that is what I already am anyway as long as I keep playing all those things.

Did you know that when you do tree pose your leg makes a P, actually, and that P stands for PEACE.

mom in downward dog

mom in Tree Pose

mom in side plank pose

mom in half moon

mom in warrior three

I know that last pose was powerful because mom breathes with her mouth open in it.

Mom, can I watch Electric Company now?

Thanks so much my Mia, my guest writer who dictated this all to me and gave me the gift of beautiful yoga art work. You were my first true yoga teacher, and your birth the Original Yoga Class. I am blessed to call you daughter. I love you.

Eve. That Bitch.

Well not really. But I like to say it. It’s because of her, we have choice. And that is both a blessing and a curse, however you want to look at it.

Been thinking a lot about choices, mine in particular.

Yesterday I chose to wake up and say: I am going to be happy. I am going to happy no matter the energy or behavior of anyone else in my house. It took almost half the day to believe that, to own it, to truly practice it….but it was my choice, stated loud and clear upon my pillow as soon as my eyes opened. And eventually the choice was all mine.

Today I chose something different. I chose to be bite the apple and get drunk on a little power and then I rode that high and abused it. I chose to be angry. Then I chose to be humbled by my anger. To feel that sense of softening and understanding that we not great at all, not very clever either, none of us are, we are all just Here. And that’s that. And then I chose to go home and finish laundry. Piles and piles of laundry and I decided it was worth it to be very happy while doing it. Enjoying each little fold. Each dump of detergent. Each sock that fell and left a trail from my basement to the upstairs (because, you see, I choose not to replace broken laundry baskets and use my arms as transport instead). Each little pair of cozy size 5 pants with worn knees got love and attention. Each drawer was opened with care and little piles of shirts were lovingly slid inside. Each apoxy stained work t-shirt and worn in carharts where placed on the shelf in his closet and blessed with my magic.

I am choosing to night wean my baby girl, who isn’t so much of a baby anymore with her string bean legs and word upon word and concept after concept and sing inside song. She holds strong the place as Baby, but even I have to admit….she is growing big and strong and my nipples can’t take the 4am until 7am 2 and 1/2 year old tug. I accept that this choice makes me feel a bit sad, a lot guilty and mostly free and rested. I also accept that this choice has made her mad, no furious with me. Choices create shifts, shifts bring change. Change is always growth.

Four months ago I chose to commit to dreading my hair. I was done with the products, the canceled appointments because I could not bare to spend the money on my headmop. I was done with the brushing and combing and the 20 dollar non-toxic conditioner bill a month. I made this choice and let me tell you there have been moments when I wonder why….not quite regret, but headline big wonder. I’d wanted to do this for years, 13 to be exact. But never had a complete set of guts to do it. I always had one or two or three or four floating around my head. And then eventually they’d get cut out. But then I did it, my freewill led me down that road. And now. Well. It’s not an easy journey to go from hair that people/out culture define as thick and wavy and pleasing to the eye….Good Hair as Chris Rock would say….to hair that is coiled together in semi-knots that will eventually grow completely into full blown dreadlocks. One of the stories surrounding the origin of the word “dread” is that the hairstyle evoked just that, dread, in the un-locked population of Jamaica. And although Rastafarians were not the first to lock their hair, the attachment to that culture is strong. And so I made a choice to quite possibly evoke dread in those around me because my hair is a nappy ass mess. But before we turn into butterflies, we live in a thready, messy, cozy crysalis, no? And it’s been a process to choose to love them. It didn’t come naturally. It took work to wake up and look at myself in the mirror and remember that I made the decision and I could choose to wonder what my hair would feel like with shiny and smooth or I could choose to just Love Myself Madly exactly the way I am.

And once I chose that, I couldn’t imagine wearing my hair any other way. For now.

I made another choice recently. I am sending my kids to school. I haven’t processed this decision so I can’t verbalize or philosophize the reasons why. Some choices are just gut, being led, seeing the shiny red apple up in the tree and not thinking before plucking it and taking a juicy bite. There is an old brick schoolhouse a block a way. It’s free. It has bay views. It’s free. We can walk. It’s free. My girls are so excited, they begged me to go. They asked me every day for weeks if they could just try it out. They made the choice really. I just choose to listen to them, understanding there is a deeper knowing here, that they are being led by an intuition or curiosity and that they deserve the right to be offered the opportunity. I don’t believe in school. Not one part of me thinks they need it. And many parts of my fear what it has to offer. That’s MY dogma. And no dogma overrides the ancient wisdom my daughters possess. And who knows how long or short it will work or not work. But the one interesting thing about some choices; they aren’t always permanent.

There are certainly some choices in my life that make me ache with a fantasy of a rewind button, to hold my finger down and watch the blur of my choices run backwards. But I know each choice opens up a gate. And each gate lends a path of healing once we get through the bramble and boulders. I am reminded each morning when I wake up and see the little piece of paper I taped to my wall next to my bed that reads: You have a choice. I don’t always get to decide what happens, but I have a choice on how I will experience the unfolding of each day, each moment, each interaction.

{She agrees with life and chooses to grow}

{some days just laying around in bed with your Loves is the only choice}

{i’m grateful the earth somehow chooses to bless us with visions and exclamations through sunsets and bluejays and hazelnuts and the kisses of Autumn air}

Mama, Who sent us this?

Mama did. I hand her the cheap yellow hopefully PVC plastic free sippy cup filled with milk.

Tanks mama. She receives it. Drinks. Smiles.

My two year old daughter uses the word Sent in place of bought or buy, give or gave. I think so may gifts come via the post, she equates goods with sending. Grandma’s coloring books and crafts, Mimi’s cookies and unicorn underwear, Aunt Diane’s novelty items….Hello Kitty and Princess overthrow.

I like it. Better even. Bought infers a cash exchange in my paradigm and give even infers a sense of some loss. But Sent is like flying, energetic consciousness soaring, rising a current of whatever tidal you choose or direct it. All things have been sent, literally or physically. Love and and hate. The Sun sent the moon. My womb sent the spark an egg. My community sends support.

The sender’s boundaries are blurred; me, you, him, her. A symbiotic and symbolic relationship, no less. A need for both, the aim or aimless release and the conscious or unconscious catch. It’s a continual exchange of gifts, like our breath; the out sends itself to the in, the in offers itself back to the out. The slide and spin, the tight and loosen, the squeeze and release. I hope I will always remember to nod to the abundance endlessly full to the edge of nothingness.

Yesterday a mysterious package arrived in the mail, sent to me from most likely Mr.Marketing. The package only contained a bottle full of diet pills. EXTREME BURN. 200 something or others of Caffiene. Acai, Green Tea. The extracted serum of a newborn’s brain tissue.

I decided to catch the send. I set the bottle out on the counter to remind me to take care of myself. Exercise. Feed myself. Rest. Smile. Sit. I think it was sent from the Goddess Hygeia herself, on the solar wings of the USPS she passed me on the key to vitality and heath without ever having to open up the bottle.

I crave writing on paper. I have a new computer but the pen and paper call for me in the moment, and I grab what ever is closest. This time I write on the back the first printed copy of of the first draft of the story I’ve been working on since February 2009. I saw it sticking from a file when I was cleaning up last night and brought it upstairs to read. It was the closest paper to me when I got The Pull, so now it holds this messy scrawl. It’s been so long since that story was sent on the wings of Word to me. I’ll never forget the day. Hung over. At the public market. Alone. Sunday. Americano and cream. Inspiring chat with friend. And this whooooooosh. Brain pounding. Foot spasmically tapping. I apparently allowed my body complete openness for a few milliseconds and in flew a whole world that in no way was born completely from my conscious mind, rational mind. It was sent from somewhere else, near and far.

The gift was a huge exhale and I inhaled and then exhaled it back down the cord of life and out the keyboard. I want the world in inhale it, too. And then exhale it back out. The version that I write on the back of, though special to me, is obsolete. It’s already been recycled 100 or more times. It’s gained it’s wait in blubber and lost it on my editorial Weight Watchers. It got lifts and tucks, went through therapy and shock, did some yoga and mediation and now it’s a new being, birthed with my midwifery help, it’s face resembles the ancient brand newness of that newborn no-mask. And I didn’t really do much of anything. I just meet me where I was and had no opinions or agenda’s to my process. It was going to be what it was going to be.

You are truly my midwives. I call out for my circle. You came. I was met where I was, and given what I needed. In this I was birthed a new person, faithful. I lost a some belief that I knew how to receive. And am reminded that the world is full of magnificent givers….of more than just money. I was sent electric hope and down home unity or let’s call it I-nity because it has nothing to do with the Seperate You. It’s the I in all of us.

One last thing. I did erase a comment a couple days ago. And I responded in regards to why I did. It isn’t the comments, or this person’s particular comment. It’s the hiding behind one’s very strong opinion. The words were sarcastic and harsh, condescending. I totally understood the “question” this person was trying to bring to the table (except instead of simply asking me a question, they accused me of making a wrong decision). But even so, I can take it. It makes it interesting in the least to read all kinds of expression of language. really….i like that kind of shit. And no, I don’t want people to go around proclaiming me Goddess. Really. Come on.

Here is what I DONT’T like in the least bit: the nameless, fake email, hiding. I don’t like it at all. It’s creepy, and if someone has strong opinions about my life and choices, then come up front and raise your hand and show me your face and tell me. But don’t hide behind your opinions. I have given out my story, endless stories. I have given my name and my face. I have even given you my address. More than anything, I have given you my stories! So, if you have something strong to say, say it, but tell me a little about yourself. Who you are (I don’t need your real name, but I need your real heart), what you like, where yo come from? Then you can say what you want to me. Politely or not. And remember, my kids might read this some day so all I ask is to leave the perversions out. Whatever. Or don’t.

I look at my 2 year old playing with some blocks and a toothbrush on the floor. Her hair is looks frazzled. I have one fairy child, one old-ass Sage, and one Fraggle. Her hair squirts in thin crinkles. Her eyes are massive and light cuts across them like glass. She bounces and bobs when she walks. Her voice is a raspy canary. One foot is totally blue from stepping in a bowl of paint (last night!). My 3rd daughter has come here to teach me a lot about being an autonomous woman.

Hey Echo, who sent me {insert working title of my project here}?

You did, Mama. Mama sent it to you.

A gift to myself from myself. Aren’t they all.

*some lyrics to on of my favorite reggae tunes, not sure which one and most likely many of them as reggae is infamous song recycling.

“I wouldn’t write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it’s a very violent thing to do to another person,” she says. “And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific.” -zadie smith

I want to write about him. I want to tell you the story about when I was visiting them both and he got a little drunk at the big birthday party and sat down and rocked my daughter to sleep for me and said to me and my nephew, “Do you know when I decided I couldn’t drink so much anymore? It was a night I almost died.” He’s 81 and I assumed that night had to have been years before but I asked anyway, when? when was it? “Oh a while now. Two, three years ago, middle of the blizzard and I could have froze to death. I’ll tell you the story but you have to promise not to tell your mother.”

And of course. I promised. And I can’t tell it here either. Even thought it’s luscious and gritty and insane and funny and totally scary and absolutely LUCKY. Because that’s my dad. Luck with 2 legs and a big heart. Although he might see his luck differently and that’s part of his unique story. He’s guided by the luck of Jupiter. And the craps table.

And there are so many more. Story upon story about the great Sonny, my dad and his crew and his life. But not now. I can’t. I always promised myself that I wouldn’t do it until he was guiding me from another Space, he is sacred and it’s his juicy life, not mine. And I hope that those stories won’t come out for a very long time. Because I love my dad intensely and next week he has to swallow a little pill that’s actually a camera and every fifteen minutes it takes photos of it’s journey down through the intestines. He’s bleeding from somewhere and this is the only way to figure it out. Pray. He’s 81 but moves like he’s 50. He has little grandkids and 2 great grand babies. He is the patriarch. He is needed and loved. His story can wait a bit longer.

I have never wanted to write so badly. The keys feel like tiny lovers meeting my flesh. I know, it’s disgusting. It’s only a computer. But it’s mine. All mine. And it’s new. And it’s white. And it has a little apple on it. And it’s the 2nd fanciest thing I own and although guilt is eating a hole in my gut I can taste it’s honey apple crips fruits in my mouth. And I want to write. WRITE! I want to write about it all. The stories of Mara and Mack, the story of Frankie, the housepainter in Long Island, the story of the 13 year old girl on Turks and Caicos who had to sell herself to feed her family, the story of how Poalina meet Guiseppe when he played the accordion at her families summer home and she ran away with him. I want to write about my own husband and how a person can just become a butterfly right in front of your eyes if you just leave them alone. I want to write about how we all belong here, under this sun, how we all breath and fuck and love and die and how our opinions aren’t really worth shit, they only take us farther away from each other and our opinions are only good as art and even then they’re just art. but I guess that’s just my opinion.

It’s not a new computer that makes me want to write. Although having all the keys on a keyboard isn’t overrated. What burns the desire is the pause. The month without one. The inability to get away and hunker down and tap the keys and share it all. My writer has been on pause for a month and that pause is exactly the gift I needed. Affirmed: I write. That’s what I do. I love and I write. And really, nothing feels better than that.

And so I don’t know how many ways I can say thank you. But thank you. (please if you supported me in any way toss me your mailing address so I can send you some love) The typing part, the love under my fingers is you. Trite but shit, what else to say. It’s because of you that I am sitting here at my desk with a new Mac in front of me. Your support enabling me to get a fucking cream of the crop computer. YOU did this. And for a long time as the dollar total climbed higher, my practical mother chatted internally: well, now I have enough for a cheap laptop and 1/2 our rent. But my husband convinced me to do this, to get what I wanted, for what I was paid for. To just invest in myself and affirm to myself I am enough to have something so totally luxurious. I am a pretty simple gal. I like to cut paper and paste it. I like to hand sew. I like to write letters with a pen. I’d rather take a train. So this, to have THIS, it’s outrageous. Pakistan is flooding and children are starving and people are fighting about a mosque at ground zero. And I have a fucking Mac.

I let him go for a bit. 2 weeks. A gift to him. To me. Silence. Stillness. Creating some kind of room that we could both choose to walk into. We went camping and I wore a bikini for the first time in 4 years and his back looked like a mountain side and the ocean jumped into his eyes and pulled me in his undertow. Thirteen years and the only thoughts I can muster up: fight when necessary. But mostly shut up. Wear your shirt pulled over your shoulder when you pass him on the stairs. Watch meteor showers on open fields while your fleshy creations with big brown eyes lay across you counting the starts in the Hunter and Pleiedes. Take last minute camping trips. Dine only on beans and marshmallows. Tell the truth through whatever kind of veil seems comfortable or not. Be ready to feel sad and angry and at loss. Enjoy being dirt poor. Be ready to change your mind in a millisecond. Say yes 99% of the time. Ignore the dirty socks. Say thank you. Flash your boobs or ass or both. Keep your boobs and ass to yourself for extended periods. Play with each others hair. Be very, very good and gentle to yourself. Mistakes will be made, but those mistakes are doors swung way wide open.

Walking along a bluff at dawn helps. and remembering that your kids are sponges to how you love each other.

sunsets are pretty nice too (can you see the moon?). hold hands with everyone while the earth moves and the sun disappears. drink cold beers. belch. whistle old time reggae tunes. hike barefoot.

I’m not sure how and I really don’t care but letting go is the only way to carry on.

This photo was taken shortly after I cleaned throw up off my bathroom floor. Earlier this same day I cleaned it off my friends leather couch. Taking care of other people feels really good, too. What else is there to do really? We’re here to take care.

Thank you for taking care of me. For reminding me what I do is part of the Whole Thing (that what all of us do IS the whole thing) and there could never be a Now without it.

2 hour walk this evening, all alone. I look inside the windows of other people’s houses and dream about living in them. That my couch was their couch and not my dog peed and torn one. And their floors where mine, all shiny and sharpie-drawling-less. And I’d slap myself and say STAY WHERE YOU ARE.

I am always roaming somewhere, by foot or by mind. A dreamer. Nothing wrong with it, but it has to made into art. It can’t stay floating in my head, taking me away from my beautiful and fantastic and perfect Now. Just like the anger I seem to have been born with, and the deep internal wail for social and environmental justice, and all the other fires that burn in my soul. They bring to places that don’t really exist. Places where I dream of doing something better, bigger, louder, more helpful. This has to be transformed into something, art, whatever. A roasted lump of marinated tofu. A garden. A baby. A song. A business plan. Or a puffy cloud of carbon dioxide released from the lung of our cells, gone and recycled back into the Earth as Her powerful Medicine.

I walked for two hours and the whole time was a reminder to stop being somewhere else. Like I said, I am a fucking late bloomer. I have enjoyed living somewhere that doesn’t really exist, wanting dreaming, planning, imagining. Manifestations comes from seeing all the flowers in front of our eyes right now. Saying thank you during each step. Throwing away our lists. Burning our vision boards. Destroying The Secret. The secret is this! Don’t keep any secrets. Say thank you and please while you’re at it. Enjoy the jeans with the holey crotch. Buy new ones when you can. Smile at the mess in the living room and stop looking in other people’s windows and wishing. Stop thinking about the life you always thought you’d have and live the one you got. Love. And love. And when your angry be angry and watch the anger make something that works for the world.

There is something happening in the sky. It’s incredible and rare and magically cool. Please don’t pigeon hole me as some Star Being Who Achieves New Age Goddessdom because I talk about the shapes in the sky (yeah, believe I’ve been containerized from my writing. little do people know I’m a pot belly pig farmer with a buzz cut from Nebraska that wears a baseball cap that says “don’t mess with your woman, dick”).

Anyway, there is something in the sky. A cross of some sort. 7 planets or stars or something aligned (see i don’t know much about much) and they form a cross, and this hasn’t happened before and regardless don’t you feel all wacked out this week? Like a wild and crazy woman/man? Is your ego asking to be released? Are your emotions a bit rollercoastery? And then there is some kind of star shower happening tomorrow night from the Pleidianville which is suppose to be a good show. Get outta the city and look up. Tell me what you see.

This is all happening and I feel it in my heart’s gut so it makes sense that my husband has taken home in the basement (again) because I can’t look at him right now and my chest feels like it’s not even mine but different, very, very different. And yeah, I said that right. My partner has been asked to spend some time living in THE BASEMENT.

Did I just admit that? It’s a nice basement and all, but why? This need to feel completely alone and blank and free. I asked him to spend time down there for awhile. Taking shifts with the kids, but him and I not really conversing or connecting, really energetically separated. I guess we’ll just have to see how it all flows but this feels right and good and part of whatever it is that is happening. I wish I missed him more, but what’s the point in missing anything? What is a miss anyway?

I also think I am angry about something and waiting for this anger to turn into art or the best field roast with beets and greens this planet has ever had. This is the first step. Saying it: Rationally, I do not want any more children. I don’t want my body to go through pregnancy again or more so, post partum again. I love my three perfect girls and like my husband said “let’s just focus on the people we have already”. I get it. I want to grow as their mother and begin to just be in the flow of them without the pending arrival of another person. But I am angry that he made it impossible for me to have another child with him. Impossible for me to practice what I have been doing for 7 years so well. I’m angry with him. Even though I signed the consent papers, while he was getting his hernias all fixed he gave the go ahead to the to doc soder his goods together so the sperm take a dive up instead of out. It’s not rational anger, he didn’t do anything wrong. But it’s anger all the same. And I can feel it burning a hole in my stomach lining.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

And last month, right after it happened, we tried. We said we’d try one last time while I ovulated and if the Universe wanted us to take care of one more soul, then so be it. He had 20 potent you-know-whats left and we used th first 5 trying. And then last week my moon blood came. I cried. And cried. And haven’t really stopped. And more compassion in the word came over me. And I got really, really thankful for my daughters and stopped and smelled between each of their toes and sniffed their heads until i could smell a tiny trace of my insides on them and touched eyelashes with them and made them blackberry milkshakes for breakfast.

Never again will we catch one of our babies together. Never again will I burrow my head into his neck and bite his flesh and wind my hips against his while we loved our baby out of me. We birth together like we make love together. And to close that book feels really sad to me. The day of birth for him and I was like a re-birth of our relationship each time. Now what? Magic mushrooms and a canoe out on a lake? Nothing in the world comes close to undisturbed birth between mama, the man and the babe. Nothing.

Wanna know something else? Sometimes if there is crap on the floor….a tag off something, a dirty straw, an old tissue, whatever, something that needs throwing away. I’ll pick it up and then find the closest place to stash it. A dresser drawer. A couch cushion. A plant pot stuffed deep in the soil. But not the garbage which could be a room or 2 away.

And my dreadlocks look like a bag ladies and yet I flaunt the insanity of their wildness around. It’s my statement that says fuck off, I’m a spiraling mess with bright green eyeliner.

The sky is crayola orange next to me. The doors are open and the breeze from the bay kisses my skin. Venus glows. The cross is out there. Lined up. Just for us. Why? How does it feel for you? I wonder what all our dreams will be like tonight. How will you harness that power?

Life seems intense right now. Not bad. No, no, no. Intense. Like the journey I have been on is taking a sharp turn around a mysterious corner. I like it. I’m scared. I’m free. So it’s gonna happen. Regardless life happens.

This is it. Last post that I keep my paypal tip jar opened. You can check out my past posts and donate to the cause if you want, but let me tell you something. I think next week I’ll be writing from a really nice new computer, quite possible the computer I have wanted for years. I am blown away by the generosity of people out there and their desire to support expression of the soul in one way or another. The amount of money in my paypal account is outrageous. And I thank you. All your thank you CD’s are being burned right now and getting ready to send out in the post. Your support means the world to me. I feel better about my work than ever before.

Last week I would have given myself the worst person parent combo award. And so of course I looked at my kids and I would have liked to give them the same status. At some point in the tangle of emotional deconstruction I said to myself, “what have I done wrong to get THIS?” {i.e. THEM. yes I know. horrible} and “If only I can become who I NEED to be this will get easier.” {i know, what a joke.} The non-stop fighting with each other or me or all 5 of us battling something, the scratching and biting and throwing and whining and ingratitude: “I HATE YOUR AVOCADO SANDWICHES AND I HATE YOU.

They behave, always, how I feel or at least they pick up on the residual effects and so it usually works out that when I’m on the upswing they are feeling it in deepest waters. On the flip side, I feel their pain on levels beyond muscle, tissue, organ, blood. I see my heart in their iris. When I squint my eyes and erase the wrinkles on my arms and lay it down next to theirs at night, there are no boundaries between our flesh. DNA under microscope research the only indicator that we have unique paths and diverse frequencies. Otherwise we are just One.

I keep reminding myself of something I heard once or a million times, who knows, and it’s “What makes the mother happy will make the child happy.”

I think now that is such Bullshit. What is true is that when the mother transforms whatever her cultural agenda or personal myth of happiness may be and allows it to be the root of the child, then yes, the mother’s happiness if directly related to the child.

This all came alive (sometimes I feel like such a late bloomer) when I was sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself and my kids the other day because everything has been like someone picked up the house and shook it like a box of blocks and dumped it out and now we are trying to figure out where all the blocks are suppose to go, to build upon, the glue, or recreate and entire foundation. And Joseph Chilton Pierce and Michael Mendizza’s Book Magical Parent-Magical Child was on the ground and it fell open to the page and my eyes landed right here:

Does the child exist for the parent or the parent for the child? The parent must exist for the child. If the child is not there, the parent survives. If the parent is not there, the child doesn’t. Only the adult has the capacity to embody simultaneously the adult world and that of the child. The adult who stretches beyond the blinders of his or her agenda is transcendent. And stretching to meet the wold is transcendent for the child……when approached this way, is a spiritual practice for both.

It’s true to be a mirror of harmony, I need to meet my own needs to a degree. But falling back on the what makes me happy thing? Or feeling like being able to do what makes me happy will help make my kids life easier? No. I gong myself off the stage for that one. It goes something like this.

Sitting for 10 hours straight in a small, cave-like room that’s painted entirely in blood red with the door locked. Whiskey. Rolling papers and a couple different things to put in them. Candles. A good light. Flower essences. A window, just big enough to let some air in but not big enough to get lost looking out of and becoming distracted. A really tight computer. A dictionary. A glass of water.

This is my agenda and has been for a long, long time. And this goes completely down another road, one that don’t think or know would bring my kids happiness. And if this myth, the image, this idea of mine doesn’t even EXIST, it can’t be truly a source of my happiness. My happiness must come from what I have right now. Right here. What I am doing is completely enough for all of us and for me.

My happiness is now. And to make it be even simpler, scaling it all down to a strong and solid skeleton, void of any ideas and erased of all visions. A blank space. Nowhere to go or nobody to be. And now we are Free. The world is Free. We are breathing freedom.

The wanting eliminates all happiness. And if my path leads me to what I always thought it should while I practice the Space, the nothing between nothing in each moment= peace, well then it happened organically because I opened myself to freedom.

I want nothing now. Wow. Magic is writing and writing is magic. All I want is this and them. Muddy floors. Bloody toes. knotty hair. Kicks and Screams. 10 outifts a day and 25 baskets of laundry. Spilled honey. Tantrums at bedtime. Toothless smiles. Tiny hands rubbing my back. Quiet drawing. Almost riding a two wheeler. Spilled fresh cup of coffee. Sore nipples. No more babies. Wall scribbles. Checker games. 10,000 questions a day. No answers. Endless love. Intensity. Nothingness.

I am happy. Not that it matters or that it even exists. And when this changes too, small or dramatic, we’ll harvest the perfection then. Right now, if this all there ever was, all there ever is, all I am…I’m the most blessed oxygenated matter on the planet.

one more week until my tip jar stays open. www.paypal.com. triumphmind.words@gmail.com I Love. And give thanks.

{written very fast on a borrowed computer and not sure if i sound literate}

First let me start here.

I am beyond grateful. I could never have imagined the generous response received from the last post. I only had one hate comment and deleted it because it wasn’t even interesting hate comment. All it said was “you’ve got to be kidding me.” from yougottobe@kiddingme.com. I feel like I should be kidding, or at least kidding myself into believing in myself. It’s never easy to sell yourself as an artist, sometimes it’s impossible and that’s why we either hire someone or have our tribes and circles spread the word about what we create. We all come to each other from someone else, a beautiful thing as a thought alone.

I have nothing to “sell” right now (actually I do but without a computer it’s impossible to complete), no book or painting or necklace or limited prints or funky arm warmers. I could try and become a different kind of writer, or teach myself to knit, and sell those services to the world, but I do what I can do and that has to be enough at the moment.

So no I’m not kidding when I say, I deserve this. This love and this support. And I am so fucking grateful. Like blown down to the down grateful. Every person who has passed on material support to me, you get something super from me. BOOM! A vintage mixed reggae CD created by my artist musician babydaddy. The circle of love and gifts is endless. Like each musical note is born from what comes before and what will vibrate after, we all pass on or borrow from what was while enjoying the abundance of the moment. I am learning this. To give freely is one of the most exciting things in world. So is knowing when not to give. We all come from an ocean of bottom and topless love. Perfect.

We take storytelling with a grain of salt. We have to. Nothing is full truth or full lie. We live in bright gray matter, a perfect blend of the light and dark. Shady shades of rainbow. Stories should be challenged, refuted, accepted, celebrated and refuted again. I write here about a lot of things I hope you know is a story, a life story, a mind story of the moment, but always heart song I can only hope. You can leave this page or any other knowing that we share stories, and in our own eyes we filtered the juice down to the pulp that facilitates growth. Changing stories as they change hands or mouths is important, too. Retell my story in your own way. Ask for what you need. Give what you don’t. Write a song and pass it on. In change your brown eyes to blue.

My story in this moment was early coffee along side Ska or maybe it was early Jamaican R and B, I’m not the musical historian in the family, but as usual it made our space light and grounded, a family vibe. When the sounds pass through the windows, know we are all at our best inside. The girls and I sat down to create some pray flags for a best friend whose father recently passed. Although I told them they could draw or write whatever they wanted on their little piece of fabric, they each drew scenes with my friend and her dad; camping, hiking, sailing, playing. Always roasting marshmallows, eating cake with a big moon and many stars above. I mentioned I noticed this.

Mama, it will be like story flags and Amy can remember all the stories of her and her dad when she sees them hanging.

Keeping the stories moving and growing like a living scripture. Each star is like a prayer flag in the sky. Look in and then up. Pass on.

On the table is a small puddle of granola and milk. I am too lazy to manifest a clean dish rag in my hand. I wipe it up with the sleeve of my shirt. I realize what I am doing and ask myself why. There is no answer. This is who I am.

I was going to kill him again today. Instead of saying some horrible thing about his post-vasectomy balls (which look like a strange purple root vegetable by the way) I decided to take the little kitchen sink spray thingy and blast him from head to toe with it when he least expected it. The floor is a lake. He wants revenge. I like him a little bit more. He gets me back with a sippy cup full of water that’s next to him. I like him a ton again.

I have a list of messes around the house. Suitcases still unpacked from our NY trip. Magnetic tea party figures covering a hallway floor. Plastic ice cream cones. Dirty coffee mugs. Wet towels. My husband.

I am starting to see him as one of my messes. He had his surgury three weeks ago and we’ve been like glue since. I usually don’t go here. My husband and me. That sacred kind of thing. But that is where the filling comes from. The creamy center, the density of space. The most sacred relationships are the nucleus to the cell. It is where is all is and if it never was it would still be.

50% if the time I am compassion with a mini skirt and high heels. I am laughter with a dirty twisty of lime. I am support beams with a steep roof pitch and solar panels. I am doing good with this whole taking care of everyone all the time business. My husband can’t lift even the little kids still. He’s depressed. His esteem is a balloon seeping air by the second. His re-set button got hit and his know is complete Unknown. The world is open. Now what.

The other 50% of the time I loose myself and my momentary love for existence. I let go of the whole sha-bang and i hyper exist in my headstory, my boiling blood, my swelling throat. Resentment. Exhaustion. Pity party for me. Muscles tighten. Shoulders to ears. Fall flat on my face. This is a really horrible percentage to still find myself. 50%. Emotional attachment and the inability to be an observer as the bombs explode inside. I attack.

The realness is that I’m not going to candy coat my stories just to make me and you feel better. I scream at my husband and threaten divorce. Then I spray water at him. Then we have sexy time. Then I scold him for not picking up his dirty fucking socks. Then we argue about how to deal with the siblings hitting each other or the girls helping more around the house. Then we fight about the fact our energy bill is REALLY HIGH and unpaid. Then we work together on a grocery list. Then he squeezes my boob in secret and Sula catches him and giggles. Then we harvest kale and lettuce and weed the garden. Then he gets pissed I am kicking him and the girls out of the house for 3 hours so I can “clean and unpack” (i.e.write this post). Then he looks me in the eyes and asks me of I am OK. We continue to love. The waves can get really rough, but you always let the ocean carry you through. We just have faith in Love. Call me a sucker, but it’s all that is real to me. There is a seed of love and passion that seems to somehow push out the spikey weeds.

What else is real is the guilt that eats me up like a razor tooth beast. And then again. Don’t we all need to just be brave and ask for what we want. I don’t ask God. I ask you. You are all more God to me than anything else. You are this world, you are like me somehow. This is my vision board. I don’t cut and make collages, I sew words together to create a new sounding world. We are creating this today and this tomorrow. So I spoke. I hope you don’t mind. I would love to hear you tell me what you need and want, too.

If you like this post and thinks it’s worth a buck or more. Go to paypal (choose option Send Money) and gimme a tip (all dollars go to replacing a very broken computer and I am almost there) You only need a CC# and my email: triumphmind.words@gmail.com. If you already have donated to my art, then send me an email with your snail mail address PLEASE. I have a serious one of a kind, like no other, reggae mix from The Great Stone! FIIIIRE!

keep love real.