the last 27.

April 29, 2009

Oh goodness.


Here are the next 27 places of gratitude, just because I find it impossible not to finish what I started.


  1. Cloudy the horse. If we squint just right at here when she is eating clovers in the field we can see that she has a horn coming out of her lovely white forehead.

  2. Oranges halves with sprinkle of brown sugar and a (big)splash of Jack Daniels

  3. Planting little seeds like strawflower and queen violet and hyssop. Digging in the dirt so much that my hands are a wonderous color of earth, brown skinned and cracked. Talking to the roots of each starter planting with my daughters, giving thanks to the possibility of the food that will grace out tables.

  4. Sunshine. Here in the pacific northwest west I am learning that another word for hope is sun.

  5. my husband singing songs he wrote, into a microphone, in the next room.

  6. My daughter Zaida’s love for standing on the stool in front of the sink and washing dishes for me.

  7. My daughter Mia’s words: mama, sometimes when I am running with the wind and when I say hi, he answers so me back. Or she. I can’t tell if it’s a he or a she.

  8. Finding family tucked across the street along the creek. Knowing my dreams of community living are manifesting.

  9. Yurts.

  10. Living in a state of shock. It’s good to be shocked. It’s life electricity. It wakes up some sleepy part of you that you didn’t mean to put to bed for good.

  11. Being withour internet or cell phones for quite some time. It makes me be here. Now. Nowhere else.

  12. My little ibook that only holds my writing. There is nothing else on it, no other program to use but Word. And so it goes that without distractions I actually can write something from finish to end.

  13. My own personal bravery. Sometimes I really think I am so fucking brave it makes me howl and yelp and dance.

  14. My daughter Sula who told me she loved me yesterday because I was a “curious old lady.”

  15. Making flower essences. I used to to do this back in the day before I had the girls and was re-inspired by a muse that lives up the street. The flowers in my valley are wildly laughing from the earth and some of them just shout out to me, hey, take me. I’m hear for healing.

  16. The muse that lives up the street. Her black wings transport me to my own magic and her grounded feets show me the walk.

  17. Dark beer.

  18. Miatake mushroom extract.

  19. My writing group. Five women splitting open to form liquid truth on the page to one another. There is just something to be seen and heard while hashing out one’s thoughts.

  20. I am thankful right now that I may not be as rooted as I once planned on being. I am thankful, for whatever reasons, to be going through financial hardship. I am thankful because it once again forces us to re-think our values and lifestyle, refining it even more. There is no need to be stuck in a moment, a record skipping. Sometimes the Uinverse provides hardship so we seek easyship.

  21. My town. It is so unbelievably uncool that it’s almost the coolest place on Earth. I come driving down my highway, through the garden of eden green and the heavenly blue it presents and I sigh a relief. After spending most mornings in Bellingham, the cool place, I love heading out to my country spot, where the pigs squeal and the hen’s cluck and neighbors hold 24 hour karaoke parties while BBQing their pigs and chickens.

  22. Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twin’s album, Rabbit Fur Coat.

  23. my mother. I don’t aspire to be her nor please her. And she doesn’t expect me to and for that I am grateful.

  24. I am so grateful I came to this lifetime as a writer. It really is so much fun. Everywhere I go and everything I do becomes a story in my head, a chance to figure ou how to explain and describe and create and pass on.

  25. Those people who hold me while I write the specific project I am working on. You have been there, not asking too many questions or giving advice, but you have been there to listen and inspire and to not run away from the largeness and, well, utter absurdity of it.

  26. Tap dancing.

  27. Slot machines.


I think that makes thirty.

Maybe not thirty straight days but I achieve my goals in an out of the ordinary manner. Always have. Always will.

Comments (5)

three. [hollywood]

March 19, 2009

In gratitude: Hollywood.

My daughter finds them deep in a box while playing hide n seek in the bottomless closet under the stairsway, a spooky kind of kid haven.  They lived wrapped in a an old silk scarf dotted with remnants of a moth feast.  It was mixed among too small and discarded for another day bathing suit bottoms and old hand made cards smeared with wax and pastels and the bags of old photographs we found in the abandoned apartment in Harlem. Ohhh, Mama, I like theeeese. And she puts them on.

Of course she would. They’re shiny and red and gold and large and absolutely fantastic. They came from Venice Beach. Fifth sunglass hut down on left. Circa 1999.

Even though the light was low and the air carried a gray drizzle as thick as oil, I had to snap some photos of her wearing them. It’s like they were made for her.  Maybe they were.

She hops up on the window ledge and sticks out her thumb. Through the camera lens I can’t tell exactly what’s she’s doing. I thought for a moment she was making a ‘gun hand’.

Are you shooting me?

No Mama! She giggles. I’m trying to get a ride…to…to…where is that place I was born again?

Hollywood.

Yeah. Hollywood.  I’m trying to get a ride to Hollywood, Mama. [I won’t mention the gulp of fear and discarded faces of vile predators that swallowed me up whole when she sang that out. just a minor snag in my parenting evolution].

I am thankful for Hollywood, mama!  That’s where I came from!  [a bit earilier we talked about gratitude, what that particular day’s gifts had been and who we were thankful for.]

Me too, Mi,  I am thankful for Hollywood, too. She’s a good old town.

And all you New Yorkers out there in your perfectly black pencil skirts and your noses in the air, take a step back.  We all know what city is The City.  And all you San Franciscans, I can hear you laughing with your recycled messenger bags all the way to the Mission, and fine.  Let’s just leave it at that.  And if you are from like London or Tokyo, then l got nothing on ya.

* * *

Thank you Hollywood. It seems like such a mess of a place to be thankful for, and let’s face it, my deepest graces go unsaid: health, food, shelter, breath, love. The ones I have to dig a bit deeper for tend to be wildly obscure, and sometimes even brought to the surface by a five year old.  But today it’s without a doubt. Hollywood. 

I met my sweetie in Hollywood, back in the day before it was in the least bit a cool place to live.  At that point you could live in a quintessential Sear’s Craftsmen for little to nothing without really having a job or a purpose.  It was cheap, the food was good, the beaches a bit north were phenomenal, the music was roaring and the streets were filled with odors that only an artist could really appreciate.  The day I fell in love with my man, it was just post-sunrise and I was frolicking on a [now formerly] nude little beach also known as Zumerez.   I was writing in my journal with just my bottoms on.  He had just caught what would be my fish dinner that night.  He used a long stick with a spear coming out of the end [for the fish and me] I never looked back. 

Hollywood gave me Science, and JuJuBeats and Nocturnal Wonderland and dub lab and Jamaica Gold and Dub Club and that fantastically deboucherous dancing freedom of leaving a club drenched in sweat and stepping into the misty air of a city built along the ocean.  The grainy saltiness of smog infused sea air around 3am after dancing for 5 hours on the look for some spicy falafel is ingrained in me forever as bliss.

Hollywood gave me Squaresville (best vintage clothes) and Cafe Tropical (best cafe con leche) and Erehwon (best local market) and Lola’s Chicken and Waffles (best chicken and waffles EVER) and the Hollywood and Taft building (best electronic music culture PR job in there) and Self Realization Fellowship (best silence) and Runyan Canyon (best city hike) and Laurel Canyon (just a cool spot filled with musicians) and Topanga Canyon (God hangs out there) and Naader (my yoga teacher) and Space (my yoga studio).

Hollywood gave me Jack Grapes, my first real writing teacher and the best advice on writing I have ever heard: write like you talk. If you wouldn’t say it that way, don’t write it that way. It was there, in his classes,  I first learned to say I am a writer and meant it.

Hollywood gave me many kicks in the ass and a night in jail and sexual harrassment and the opportunity to experience honest to goodness assholes and black boogers from really dirty air. Hollywood gave me a good schooling in street smarts.

Hollywood gave me really.bad.coke.[which also gave black boogers].

Hollywood gave me a large and well loved fashion boot collection.

Hollywood gave me five tattoos and a few piercings.

Hollywood gave me so many hassles and such anxiety and heartache that I had to leave for a year and go live in a cabin on a river in the Sawtooth Mountains to just breath and lay in the grass and talk to god.  And when our lease was up there, Hollywood called me back and I was ready for her.

Hollywood gave me earthquakes. and mudslides. and fires.

Hollywood gave me prenatal care atop a mountain with views that go on forever and homebirth support and it was in that city that I rode the wild birth of my first daughter, who arrived in our moldy, yet cute one-bedroom apartment in Silverlake. It gave me sunny morning walks with my new baby girl, snug in a sling, me as a new mama, proudly wearing bright red sunglasses and sneakers and a carrot juice in hand.  It gave me early morning yoga classes taught with my baby girl strapped to my chest and mid afternoon rides to the beach to introduce my daughter to the ways of the ocean.  Hollywood watched me as I went from a girl, to a woman, to a mother. 

Hollywood gave me mural art and traffic jams and wild mushroom tamales and almost an MFA.

Hollywood gave me Watts Towers and La Brea Tar Pits.

Hollywood gave me Griffith Park and The Getty and LACMA and Mann’s.

Hollywood still gives me family, friendships that are magic, age-old sisterhood, endless and boundless. Hollywood hold her hand down on the bench next to them, saving me a seat forever in the foothills of her hips and waist.

Hollywood put me in a academy award winning movie (no shit! and I only had to smoke about 75 cigarettes in one day for the part!)

Hollywood gave me an invitation into Nickerson Gardens and Imperial Courts, the housing developments where I was able to do some of my life’s most fulfilling and frustrating work.

Hollywood has always been my muse.  She poked me when I wouldn’t get out of bed and she tempted me with her grime and and her guts.  She ignited in me the fire of my evolution and looked me in the eyes and said grow the fuck up now. I can say all this, looking back with such sweet spot nostalgia and no regrets as I sit here in my land far, far away.

I bow down and give big thanks to that absolutely immoral, materialistic hijacker of common decency. I bow down and say thank you to the vibrancy and technicolor hilarity at it’s finest. There will always be a connection there, it’s the home I love to hate.  In my heart and body and closet, there will always be little bit of Hollywood and that I am proud of.  And no matter how country I get, it will at least shine through in her:

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Comments (17)

two.

March 16, 2009

In gratitude.

Today: My Mirror

[i will preface this was something off topic.  last post i totally cold-dissed my computer and sure enough 20 minutes after I hit send, my computer was pronounced dead.  it’s gone.  so my ‘30 day in a row of thanks’ business will be ‘30 days when i can get on another computer’. unfortunately, uncle sam went and took a bunch of money i was hoping for to buy the much lusted after ibook, so patience will be my practice as i await the funds for my new machine. hand jobs on the corner anyone? 20 bucks a pop].

* * *

Sula! If you don’t give me that right now I am going to get a better toy and I am never going to share it with you ever!

Sula! I am gonna smack you in the head with this bowl at your head if you don’t give me the blue marker!

Sula! I am going to throw you out the window if you don’t give me my book!

* * *

Mia. Those words you used with Sula today are not kind ways to talk to anybody. You can choose words that will make you feel better and won’t make Sula sad.

Long after the fact of the numerous five-year old volcanic expressions, I sat down to talk to her.

But mama, you talk like that.

And I look in her big brownish, greenish, yellowish round saucers for eyes with lashes that are illegally long. She looks right back at me, then glance away for a moment, knowing in some little kid way that what she is telling me is going to make me react somehow, she knows that what she is saying to me is big for me.

I don’t use those words, but evidently my sentiment falls through the holes in the sieve.

I do? I talk like that? I don’t say those things to you.

More quietly than she has been all day Yes mama. You talk mad last day and today. I am just talking mad like you.

* * *

And everyday I get to look into this mirror. Today it looked ugly, like beyond bad hair and acne. It was horrible mother day in my river valley. Yes. She is right. My level of stress has been so high and my voice reflects how totally and utterly unconscious I am about it. Sometimes a straight up look in the mirror is all I need.

I have been watching how my voice sounds, the energetic quality and the words I choose even when I am totally frustrated and want to throw every last one of the out the window, shedding, slobbering four-legged friends included.

Thank you mirror, for reminding me how to walk my talk.


 

Comments (8)

ONE. [love dove]

February 7, 2009

ONE.

The dawn has awoken to your morning calls and the dusk has been called upon by your hungry bedtime wails. My little bird of prophecy and peace, of sensuality and fire; you have traveled around the entire sun. You have felt the harsh air of winter on your newborn cheek, and smelled the fertile soft earth after the spiring rain. You have napped at the banks of the river on warm sunny summer days. You have picked apples off trees strapped to my back under the sepia sky of Autumn. My third daughter, Lovey Dovey, you with many, many names: Happy First Birthday.

* * *

Dear World, I am choked in my throat and my arms tingle to just reflect on her beauty and the beauty she opens my eyes to. Contagious, stellar, warming, from above and below. We indeed must live in a brilliant place, a peculiar yet undoubtedly settled and thoughtfully crafted world right in the middle, a perfect place for a mother and child to hold each other, noticing the love and wonder of new life; trees, jellyfish, humans, birds, the blooms of a borage plant, turtle shells, the cocoa bean, moss, a baby’s small toe. It’s a wonderful place. So many teachings and comfortable nooks to rest our heads. This baby that now sleeps next to me as I type is proof that our hearts are all worthy of spilling open and receiving that pure nectar of prana. When I look at her I have faith in me. In you. She is not beyond the wonder in any of us and although it’s sometimes hard to notice my own soul seeds. so sweet, sweet enough to create such life, one sniff behind her neck and I am brought back to myself. We are all worthy of as much love as this small daughter of mine attracts. We all are. She taps me on the shoulder calls me to dig into my dusty heroine archives and pull out that never-ending scroll that holds record of how perfect our soul’s song and dance truly is.

Her spirit has filled our ravenous hunger like a hearty peasant soup, a colorful and wild seafood pasta tossed with only the finest oil of olive, a crusty outside chewy inside baguette, a bowl of farm fresh lemon custard, tender berries of blacks and blues and reds in big hand made bowl. She sparked our drive on the open road and cheered us on as we packed our boxes, manifesting movement for our nomadic bones. She held me tightly as I slept in a sand invested camper and peed all night long from an open metal door out on to forest floors, Come on mama, it’s an adventure. She calmed my nerves when I couldn’t sleep at the edge of land and rock, worrying about where I was and where I was moving to and why. Don’t worry mama, just take me to where the whales swim. And as each day passes she continues to instill in us a faith for our creative purpose. All things are possible she whispered in my ear the night I found out she lived within me somewhere under my heart. I come to your home because I want to watch you weave all the passions into One. She has taught us to shapeshift into parents of three daughters. There is nothing less than magic (or insanely wild) in that.

I pull her in between my arms devour her when I can. These days her protocol is to kick fast and free in boundless exploration on hands and knees, like flashes of lightning she is off to touch the stones or sparkly multi-faceted crystals collected by the older girls or to pull on the dog’s tail. She surfs the couch and the chairs to find ways to rip leaves off the plants or grab handfuls of potting soil or to get to the garbage underneath the kitchen sink. A small scrap of anything on the floor never goes unnoticed by her little fingers and curious mouth. These times are precious. And they move fast, as fast as the flow down river after days of rain. A note to me in 20 years: Don’t ever forget the glisten in her eyes when her face is above yours and you are looking up at her, her seductively long lashes shelter the shiniest, darkest, deepest secrets of your own soul.

She is ethereal and unformed, transparent and bodiless spirit. She is fierce and dwells in flesh, hot blooded, sharp nailed, chunky toothed, fast hands pulling at my long knotted hair, my peacock feather earrings, the saggy skin on my cheek. She is all these and more. Mellow and easy, sleepy and demanding, hectic and still. Alive. She is this body which lingers upon dainty and perfectly sized, a full backside and curvy thighs, muscular arms and quite possibly the most exactly angled toes atop the most graceful arch on earth. She grows this skeleton form here with me, this whole family. I think she really likes us.

* * *

Thirteen big juicy moons have shined down on you and thirteen dark moons have held you through the mystery of the shadow. This is a celebration. Of you. At night I crawl into bed next to you, pressing our foreheads together, our noses touching, our breath blending and I suck it in deep. I watch your eyelids form quarter moons, and your lips and cheeks deepen to apothecary rose as sleep becomes you. I can talk of all you are and what you do, but I do not know you in fullness, not in the way I crave to, in a way I never will. That’s not how it works. But the chance that each day I am gifted with knowing you a tiny more keeps my eyes and heart open beyond the screams and the spills, the diaper struggles and the exhausted pre-sunrise scratches in the face. The threeness of your placement in the family is beginning to fade from the confusing maze, the head smacking into walls and the many moments huddled in cobwebbed corners to that of a rhythmic tide, a knowing that I can do this. In the moments when I feel as if I am being pulled in by the undertow, I am reminded of your soft mystery, a quiet gift from somewhere Out There. The girl who brought me home, held my hand as I walked through the basement of my soul and who sat on my hip as we creaked up the rickety staircase toward a door that held even more darkness behind it. You are the one that said, go on mama, open it up.

You were born on the cusp of night and day during the loudest dance of wind and rain, the Mother of Birth and Death were having a soundclash, with skirts of skulls rattling from every corner, reminding me that with birth comes death and with death comes birth and we can’t do one without the other. The are the same face equally divided. And while you brought the beautiful gift of darkness as you emerged, you also brought the desire to truly heal, bare down to my soul’s bones, in the spacial marrow that connects me to all life. It is you who handed me the key to my own ancient story; once locked in a cave and scribbled with sharp vixen nails, I have finally found the eyes to read. There is a misconception that we need to bring Light into the Dark all the time. But now I remember how to gather the Darkness from the Light. I am finally on the path of being a whole woman; scraping away every last fiber of who I was, ripping off the comfortable ego, which was worn for show and pride, draped over me like a silk shawl, beautiful and worthless. I am able to say now: I am not just a mother. I am a woman, a wild animal, gardener who sows the dark seed and the light who enables it to bloom. I am the drum beat of my own heart. And all this, these words I write, you have given me.

It is no coincidence you were born only two days before Imbolc, where Goddess Brigit stands at the middle gateway between the frost of winter and the blossom of Spring. She gifts us with primal healing and glistening poetry. You are no doubt my talisman, just a glance your way, your presence on my hip or back or at my breast reminds me of my path: these words are meant only to heal.


I hold you up to the world and say Welcome to this New Year.

I hold you up to The Dark One, Kali Ma and give thanks for the firestorm of destruction that swept through me that night you chose to come. I give thanks for those months and months of postpartum rage and depression, for such raw abandon of everything so I could sit in front of my soul’s hearth and listen to the flames that were never less than a blaze. I give thanks for the opportunity to just burn and burn until now where I stand, nothing but a naked skeleton, bones missing, crushed, in piles on the ground in form of pure ash. Dead. Ready to ask: Who am I now? Where is my heart?

I hold you up to, Kwan Yin, Mother Goddess of many names, who wears the cloak of Compassion and Light for the rebirth of a wounded body and heart. I give thanks for her warm arms that held on to me when I was almost too tired and weary to hold on to you. I ask her to surround you in all your moments of weakness and strength.

I hold you up to the Dove, the bird that has shown it’s flight to me since you were just small buds of hands and feet and fast little heart-drum. It makes sense to me now, knowing this simple white spirit of flight has represented sexuality, creativity and holds the gateway to the feminine innerworld since the beginning story of ourselves. Dove sings the mourning coo of what has been while it wakes us up to the brilliance of what is now, the newness of the dawn.

I hold you up, Baby Girl, I introduce you to this massive world and call out your Name, your spirit name, which I hold in my heart as a secret and whisper only into your ear at night. It is your power name, for only you and the winds will know it. I hope it will ride through the air deliver the message to the heavens that you are here and safe, you have arrived into yourself.

I hold you up to your Spirit Guides, those magical beings who I bow in great thanks and honor. They have chosen you, they are by your side as I take on new journeys to fill my creative soul, embarking on new adventures. In those hours I may not be there by your side, know they always are.

I hold you up to Coyote, Great Trickster, in honor of the laughter, the absurdity of this journey, of all the falls and spills and ridiculous mess we make daily. To laugh it all off, this gift, I hope is bestowed upon you, my giggly, silly little girl.

I hold you up to Great Spirit, to The Mystery which is the source of of this every-giving sweet Love and yell at the top of my lungs: THANK YOU. There is nothing more to say about that.

And I give thanks to you, for letting me peak in on this life of yours, because it is all yours. I am only here because you picked me. Just show me what you need .

* * *

 

She doesn’t walk, but she sure talks: mama, Dada, light, thank you, thunder, moon, uh-oh, uh-uh, that, agua.

Her five teeth love eating. Anything I put in front of her. Quinoa drenched in sesame oil being a recent favorite. And her first taste of birthday cupcake (lemon vanilla with coconut rose frosting) was a big hit.

She is the best dancer we’ve made yet.

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the moment after I caught you.  mama loves you so much she’ll share this with the world.

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and only a week before that, this is how you made me feel…

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I love you Zaida Echo Skyla Dove Papaya Spiral Rock.  Infinity.

 

 

Comments (14)

my sitting is standing.

November 23, 2008


All summer long I saw the signs. Mid-day family break. You sit zazen. Your kids do artwork with a loving teacher. Fridays@ local Dharma Hall.

I meant to go every Friday, really, I did. But first there was something. Then something else. Then about ten thousand other things.

And then months and months and I decide it’s time. Being at the cusp of either coming or going, living or dying, I decide that sitting for an hour in Practice would take me to the proper turn in this scrambly and windy road.

This morning, excited, I explain to the girls what today’s outing will be. Mama: meditates. You: play. Together we get ready, dressing. Gathering boots and socks and mittens and snacks. Wondering if the kind caretaker changes diapers in case of an exploded poop? Pack disposables instead of clothes, just be to nice.  Thinking of calling the Dharma Hall to make sure advertised meditation with childcare is indeed still on. Forgetting to do that part, I speed into town, ignoring the ticket I received two days prior. Also ignoring the fuel tank on E, I glide on grace. I need to meditate. Punching up hills, flying down: I.will.not.be.late.  Shoulders up to ears. Screaming children wanting to listen to Circe The Beautiful Witch one more time. Tears stream down my face. Could it be true? One hour of sitting is just moments away? I wanted it so much.

{Don’t want it too much}

Bellingham is full of one-way streets and of course I get stuck in that misty mid-day maze and then parking as usual is a puzzle-like bitch to me, six inches in the yellow, five inches away from making it impossible for the person in front of me to get out.  Fifteen minutes after the Time my vociferous bunch enter the red cedar room. French doors between our noise and pure silence. I stumbled a bit, looking for sign that led to a basement that said: Park Kids. Go Heal. Four little eyes open wide on my side of the glass panes, watching a room full of people doing nothing, siting, still. One sticky almond butter hand hand knocks on it. I grab and pull her away. NO, I hiss.  Are they meditating or praying or both, she asks.  Yes, I answer. The other one whines, loudly, I wanna draw now!  SHHHH, I hiss.

What does one do in a hallway of a Zen center, late and wondering? Wait until the baby lets out a loud yelp and get ready to run out the door back to the car. Before you can hide your head completley and escape, enters from the still room: Nancy. Kind, quiet, blue eyes, clear.

Can I help you?

Is today family meditation? My hand is one one girl’s head. The other girl is taking apart a pumpkin-lantern flower. Three seeds she pulls from inside it and places on the Buddha’s lap. Half of the lantern she sticks on the top of his head, like a little cap. So pleased with her offerings, I see her dancing for him out of the corner of my eye.

Oh. No. Well it used to be. But Tim is in charge and he is out of town and… Oh dear, I’m so sorry. We should have taken the signs down. It ended in September, I think. But do you want to sit? I’d be happy to take the kids downstairs and draw with them.

Really?

The look in my eyes was thanks enough, an answer without words. She takes the baby out of my arms. I ask the girls if they’d like to draw with Nancy. They smile, excited of the newness, the sacredness of the space enticed them, the smell of Kyoto incense, familiar to them.

We quietly walk back into the room. She walks down the stairs and I take the last zafu cushion on the right. My bottom settles down, my right is cradled by my left. In: my belly expands. Out: it contracts. I.Am. Alone.

But not for long. The screaming starts. She must have realized I was not with Nancy or the girls. At first I practice unattachment from the screams and cries and the quiet shushes coming from the less than soundproof basement.

Well, I guess that babies are part of this all, screaming babies are on this earth and they might just be heard while 20 people sit.

Is she disturbing everybody?

Do I get up? I’ve only been sitting ten minutes.

No. This is my time. I think she is quieting down.

(screeching loud enough to make your hairs stand on end)

Christ. She never gives up. She’s so loud, that child! I think I just heard someone get up and leave. Oh shit. I am ruining their practice.  They are going to hate me.  Stop!  Let it be!

[blood curdling]

Hail Mary full of grace the lord……wait, stop. am I actually going to pray that to get her to stop screaming. Please, please, I beg you Z, please just calm down, mama is up here, please.  stop. Stop! This is crazy. This isn’t any good. Why am I even here?

[uncontrollable screaming]

Do I attach myself to this practice or to this baby? Do I unattach to both? Mind: Bitch slaps me: GO. Milk: Sprays Down. Heart: Answers: Her.

Slowly I pull one leg from under me trying not to make a soundscrape with my pants on the cushion fabric, but in this type of quiet, you can hear an eye blink.I quickly pull the other leg out.  I use my arms to push up and then scamper across the smooth wood floor with wool socks help. I tip-toe down gray carpeted steps into a warm and bright basement. The big girls happily munching apples and drawing. The little one; red, snotty, soggy, sad, mad. pooped.

She hands me back the baby, at the same time the baby leaps into my arms, sighs, and hold me her head reting againt my shoulder.  We tried, she says. We tried, I said. A few tears escaped my eyes. Embarrassed. I know, she says. I know.

We need to find another person for Fridays to be with the kids.  We really are family friendly.  I am so sorry we forgot to take those signs down.

I should have called. I just don’t think the baby was ready for this yet. It was sudden. She needs a few minutes to adjust.

Soon, she says. Soon.

Right now I guess my practice is nursing, I say. I pop Z on my boob and she is finally done sobbing. She is home.

I stayed downstairs while she went up, back to her cushion.  No need to trample back through their still space. The girls drew with red and green and black sharpies on large board room paper. Sula: an Angel Flower. Mia: The Sun and Moon at the Beach.

The bookshelf was filled with delicious books, books I have been wanting to read for lifetimes, all for the borrowing for a whole month at a time. I flipped through them, soaking them in, enjoying the the silence coming from upstairs, happy to know that above my head, they were all there, still. And I was happy, to be down here, with them. It was not my time. Is not. Will be. One day.

* *

When we heard the chanting start we headed back up to take part in the noisy section of the practice. The girls and I sat down and chanted a long with them or tried to. It was lovely, really, still all mine and not even close. But I felt  cared for, received.  Understood. In the end, everyone adored my kids, welcomed us, pats on my back, hearts out in the open. Come back, they said, screamers and all.

* *

Upekka-parami:

My I develop mind of perfect equanimity, a mind that is just and impartial towards all beings, without preferences; a mind that cannot be shaken by the pairs of worldly opposites: pleasure and pain, praise and blame.


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narrative on the new guy. or. all on the same ocean.

November 9, 2008

First I threw up all the Columbia Crest Chardonnay. Then a snack of apples and walnuts with some maple creamline yogurt. Then came the lunch of spinach salad and slow cooked split pea soup and two chocolate chip cookies (I skipped dinner, too nervous to eat the beans, squash and quinoa we made for the girls) and finally the millions of black raspberry seeds that made most of my smoothie earlier that morning. For the record, tiny black raspberry seeds are torturous to puke. I threw it all up and then some, and then I dry heaved for another ten minutes. B pulled my hair out of my face and offered me small sips of water. I hunched over the toilet until my throat was swollen and raw, my teeth filled with small seeds and my body felt like a demon had squeezed it’s way out of my digestion track and splattered itself in mercury-like particles all of the porcelain

You going to be okay?

Yeah.

You just puked up a shit load. Did you drink that much?

Yeah.

Wanna take a hot bath?

Yeah.

He helps me undress, chilled and shivering and naked, over-grown leg hair standing on edge, toe-nails chipped, belly stretch marked. As I climbed over the edge of the tub into the steaming water, sprinkled generously with jasmine and lavender oil, I looked at him in the eyes and said,

I just threw up the last eight years. I think I just threw up the Bush Administration.

* * *

I was one of those people who wrote in Ralph Nader two times ago. Disgusted with the two-party rule, my belief system seemed so left it was on the flip side of the charts. I was living in National Forest, underneath the towering Sawtooth Mountain range and along the Snake River. My daily routine involved a lot of sitting and doodling on grassy banks and climbing snow encrusted ledges and lazying around hot springs . My mornings were tea with mist pockets and a yard full of elk . Afternoons were spent gardening while baby moose clomped along my drive, following their mama. It’s easy to get mesmerized by the preciousness of it all; an amazing biosphere, the only land we all know and stand on. All in the same breath it is ours and it’s not. It’s also entirely untouchable, it will be here long after we cease to.

Enter Bush: a new standard of greed and ego and Armageddon was born. His Kingdom was elsewhere, this earthly place was just a doormat and so many others nodded hard along behind him. I let go of that little girl in first grade who held up that sign, carefully crafted with glue and glitter: Go Carter. I ripped up my voter registration card and blew it into the fire. My only representation became myself and the way I lived. Anarchy would be what it was called, but there is no true definition of this. I became indifferent. Like organized religion, organized government, was a thing of my past. The two seemed to bleed unto one another and a very specific Judeo-Christian Dogma and State had re-newed its longterm vows and stayed in bed together, intertwined and incestuous. I stepped back. If presidents can live outside the law, so could I. The law they called Golden became my guideline.

Time clicked, which it does so well and fast and the Bush Clock was expiring. Words of this new person, this man who representing the nameless and the faceless, whose spirit seemed kindred to the Me’s across the globe. There was great and urgent reason for his bravery and he was quick to navigate a system thick with Original Bureaucracy and run for President. The meaning his words delivered were common, open for interpretation, filled more with a new energy than with a definition. There were no answers but all of us seemed to hear the same question: How badly do you want this? I took off my shoes and started to dip my toes back in the water. Candles lit. Prayers said. Maybe this is my country, too, after all. Hopeful.

* * *

Having a TV-less home posed as a dilemma. How were we going to watch the election? We could leave our cozy, flame lit house on the rainy Autumn night and invade a friend’s place or go to one of the numerous viewing parties in town, but with three kids, staying home past dinner is always the right choice. And truthfully, I wanted to watch this alone. I didn’t know what my reaction might be if the Unspeakable occurred. We lugged the old television out of the garage and dusted the webs from it and stuck in the corner of the living room and went to work. After an entire roll of tin foil was sculpted like a palm tree, shoved out the window trying to reach Reception Heaven, we still got no picture. We brought the box up to the next story, attached it to a DVD player, put in a movie about a bear whose best friends are a duck and an owl and settled the girls in front of it.

I had no desire to bring them deeply into the election. They recognize Barack Obama as a leader. Their little ears listened to NPR election coverage on the radio driving to school, until they would ask me to turn it off and put on the Ramones or M.I.A. or roll down the windows so they could hear the rain fall. Obvious was their awareness that they live on the cusp of change. As the election day got closer, I noticed less sleep more tantrums. Our stress is their stress. They sensed history was in the making. I believe our children are messengers/instigators of this very specific and real change we are becoming. They forge a path for their own womb blessings. They merge with the material plane, as we all do, with a soul map. There is no mistake these ones came to us right now. This is their time, this is their president. I must trust they will learn social and political empowerment as their world perspective unfolds and expands. Right now they are settling in with the Laws of Nature and Spirit, understanding shifts and change through the leaves falling and the temperature dropping. They learn about death and survival from the eagle swooping down, catching a spawning salmon with it’s razor claws. Within our own walls and the community that surrounds them they learn lessons of leadership, equality, stewardship. Once they have a grasp on their immediate, they’ll quest for a larger view. Religion and Politics? My job to is shine a light so they can find their own way.

All week long I removed myself from the hoopla. I concentrated staying present with the girls and lived the Hope and Change I was attached to happening. While the rest of the world was holding signs and canvassing, I was making bread. Each knead of my hands I floated in meditations of being sheltered by a home, cupboards filled with food, bills paid, troops withdrawn, the earth given reverence, kids vibrant and healthy and whole, all people given equal rights. Each loaf that rose high warm and chewy, gave me hope. If I could make a loaf of bread rise, this world could change.

* * *

We took the tin foil and arranged a similar like wave-attracting sculpture to the wireless card on the laptop. Living out here has it’s pluses but drawbacks leave us digitally impaired. We hung the card against the wall on a hook and propped the computer on the wooden salad bowl filled with perfectly juicy Chehalis apples. CNN.com began to stream, lopsided computer and all, but still we were in business.

He put the bottle of wine in front of me. Condensation created droplet around the green glass. I poured a tiny Ball Jar full and swallowed it down with the same ease of drinking water after a long run. I didn’t know I was this nervous, I giggled. I poured a wee bit more. And then some more.

The wine filled me up as did the tokes of the rolled tobacco inhaled on the porch as the rain moistened my face and wet my wool socks to saturation. My drunkenness was apparent when the sounds of the coyote were magnified and multiplied I could swear I saw tens of pairs yellow eyes fixed in on me. Glowing. An arms reach away.

As we watched little shapes pixelate to form a map of this nation fill up with reds and blues and then more blues, beyond my blurred vision, I could see we were transcending politics. We were transcending powerlessness and power. We were transcending being led and leading. We were slowly becoming the world we all have been drawing in our heart-shaped sketchpad and sculpting in our dreams journals for a long time. We opened a door, we walked through it. Half of us stand naked and eager. Energized, organized, spiritualized. Now what.

* * *

It’s obvious we are very divided by a gaping crevice of views; personal choices, war waging, energy harvesting, and economy suturing. We are all sure we are correct regardless if our choices are made under the guise of a dogmatic system, philosophical order or everyday intuition. It’s like my daughter who wakes up some days and is sure she needs cookies or ice cream for breakfast. She is sure of it as she drags her chair over to the freezer to reach the high shelf. And I am sure that I won’t give her any. We both are so sure. And then I think of her own body wisdom. Maybe she needs some sugar, and so I say how about a big spoonful of raw honey and then some juicy eggs? And yes, we have compromised and we both feel good about the way it all worked out. In my household, divided we struggle and with struggle we fall. We we come together and blend, we unite and evolve.

And now that it’s all said and done. How can we all feel listened to and respected? Safe and protected? How can we all feel like a whole part to our village, or state, or country or planet? I know for some time now I have felt like a foreigner on the only land I have ever known. The current administrations choices made me feel cast aside, unheard, alone. And now that the pendulum swings, there are people out there that feel like I did for a long time. This doesn’t make me feel relief. I don’t stand here with my hands on my hips, smug smile spread across my face, yelling over the red lines: So there! Now you know what it feels like! To hell with your old bible thumping, oil thieving old men! To hell with your judgments and your threats! Time for your stomachs to be tied into knots! No. I don’t say that. Personally, I’d rather be united versus watching an even thicker, angrier line drawn [once again] between us, even if this time I stand on the side-in-charge. I’d rather find some common ground; the air we breath, the blood that pumps through each of us, the land we explore and enjoy. The perfect entanglement of lovers bodies. The children we raise.

And beyond the dream of unity, how can we as individuals, separate but equal, form a new and peaceful society for the whole? This gift of shift, this very real change, is to strengthen the bond of humankind, not weaken with divide. It’s to wipe clean karma and gently apply medicinal salve to old, infected wounds. It’s an opportunity to learn to live first with self-love an then extend it, bit by bit, out There. We didn’t just vote for a man, we voted for Us, for our babies. But the question and the search and reason for all of this will always be: How can we live together non-violently. How can we hold space for everyone in tightly populated, tree-less corners with the messy and revealing after-maths of war and famine, slavery and terror? How can we let go of the apocalypse of our hearts and lift the veil of hate and see clearly the manifestations of love. How can we live in abundance and continuously transform with this newfound and electrifying energy? How can we keep releasing the anti-Christ from within, the dangerous ego that brings suffering and disconnect? We have done so much work, unseen and mysterious, tangible and calculated, heart and mind. After pausing for Great Thanks and some Good Partying: Now what. Who are we now, all of us. This is not a question to be answered. It is one to bathe in each moment of the hours that pass as we live this utterly precious life.

* * *

While walking in the rain along the interurban trail with kids, we stopped at the community bike shop. I am still investigated biking arrangements that can transport three kids ranging from 18 to 45 pounds (tandem bike pulling a chariot seems to be the answer). Among the patina of collective rims and frames, hop-knobs and knick-knacks, bells and baskets there laid a chalkboard, sheltered from water. Here is what was written on it:

I no longer expect things to make sense. I know there is no safety. But that does not mean there is no magic. It does not mean there is no hope. It simply means that each of us has reason to be wishful and frightened, aspiring and flawed. And it means that to the degree we are lost, is it on the same Ocean, in the same night.

-Elizabeth Kayle


*this is the name that was messily signed at the end of the quote. I can’t figure out who she is, but find this to be one of the most breathtaking thoughts: the same ocean, in the same night. If anyone has read anything else by her, let me know, please.

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fear of flying.

July 21, 2008

I’m home.  In more ways than one.  Being gone, away from my family for that long is something I just don’t love.  But on the othside of things, I know that part of my path is to move, to be with people I love, to spread health and hold them on their journey.  And if that means I have to be away from the kids, then so be it.  It makes me a better person to open myself up to others, and in turn, that makes me a better mother.

Mothering my mother wasn’t easy.  I tried to think back on how she nursed me as a child while I was sick.  There was lot of just letting be, but there were times of tougher love.  Like when my fever was so high and my throat so swollen and she insisted that I drink fluids.  I’d resist, but she’d insist.  Just a drop, a little drop, she’s say.  And so I said, just a drop, just a little drop. just a bite, a tiny bite.  just a walk, a short walk.  It’s uncomfortable to reverse roles and at the same time it’s beautiful, full circle.  Giving what I was given is the ultimate gift.

Stay tuned for more talk on berries and all the wonderous things to make with them,  living simply and slowly and how this is the hardest thing I’ve had to do, and more adventures on the path to spin fire.  Until then, here is a crazy-ass story about my trip.

I’m just not good at flying. Rewind.  What I mean to say it I am not good at is being a passenger on a plane.

Although I have been soaring the friendly skies on commercial airlines since I was a baby, it was around the age of fifteen when I realized, I hated it. Taking off over the endless Pacific, from California back to New York by myself, I found myself writing in my journal: We could crash. Oh my god. We could crash right now. Well, what other way to die? Sucked into the hole of the big blue sea? I can almost hear the silence of plane hitting the water now  As a matter of fact I am sure I’m going to die.  This big piece of tin is sparong through the air.  It’s not a bird.  It shouldn’t be up here.  There were so many things I wanted to do before I dropped into the blueness, the death, my death….

Morbid.

Unless I am using my  own wings, I just don’t like it. I do it, it’s a necessary ‘evil’ in my life. But I much rather be on the ground or on a boat. I like feeling time pass as I travel. Not zipping by.  I like to see things at a human speed, the trees, the road, the people.  I like to enter new timezones with some warning, watching the transition from forest, to plains to desert, to sea.  I don’t like the dreaminess of the clouds below me, not knowing what I am above.  Bottom line: I want more control.  I want to be able to stop off at an exit and hit a greasy dinner for a grilled cheese and a shake and a take a photo of a random sign and know that I am in This Town now.  And flying tricks me into a new time, a time that my body rejects.

About a week before take off, the anxiety assaults every part of my life; wake time, dream time, in between time. Before I had kids, I just popped pills and did whiskey shots. It was the one time meditation never worked. Nope. Good old drugs were the only thing that settled me into that seat without clawing the strangers flesh next to me. Once I am drunk, I didn’t care I was 20,000 feet above the earth.

But I can’t very well get trashed with three kids in tow, one of them breastfeeding. So my soultion has been an OCD-esque ritual and visualization. 

I get on the plane. Settle the kids. I close my eyes and face my palms up. I watch the plane in my mind’s eye and surround with light, a light that I see coming from the inner most core of the universe, not just any old white light, folks, but The Light. The Light that protects all things from all things, the light that never ceases, never dims, never dies. ANd once the plane is illuminated, bright as the stars, it;s time to call down the winged folk.

Arch-Angel Micheal is the head man at the nose of the plane. He winks at me as he holds on to the front, tells me he has a good grip. He’s muscular and gorgeous and utterly doable. I imagine him to look like the hot one on Lord of The Rings. The blond hot one, not Viggo. His wings are massive and stark white. Then the beautiful goddess angels come on down with their iridescent wings. The head to either side of the plane and hold on to it’s wings, two for each wing.  These creatures are otherwordly, curved and ancient, crytal eyes and firey red hair.  The look at me and smile; don’t worry M, we have it, we’ll hold her steady for you. And finally the gender neutral being, this creature, wild and huge, my protector with scaley skin and flaxen hair, long nails, and 20 arms, just a wild colorful thing, takes the back end. I’ll never let go, it tells me, precious cargo.

And then take off. And I must say my prayer. If anyone, child or flight attendant, or person who knows me who happens to be on the same flight sitting behind me (this happened once) even tries to talk to me, they get firmly told to just wait, unles they want to die, until I am done with my prayer. My prayer is my own version of a childhood favorite, The Hail Mary:

Hail Mary, full of grace

We are thee

Blessed are those among women

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb

Holy Mary Mother of All

Hold us now and forever

Oooooommmmmmm

Blasphemous I know. But the original version just isn’t for me me anymore with all that sin and death and god talk.  I feel okay about switching it around. It’s my ritual, my flight, my fear. My prayer.

Last Wednesday I got on a plane in Bellingham and headed to Mesa, AZ with all three kids. I proceeded to the same thing once everyone was settled in the seat. I had Mia do the visuals with me, made it fun for her, never leading on to why I had angels come down and carry the plane. She just assumed that’s how planes must fly.  I’ll leave it to her father to explain engines and such.

And we were off.

Things didn’t feel right.

So I thought maybe it was because I was ready to drop of my two big girls in Arizona with family and leave them, taking the baby to NY with me. I was going to miss them. I don’t like being away from my girls, not even for a whole day let alone a whole week. A week is a very long time.  I left them one other time for a week, but they stayed home with their dad.  Maybe things felt uneasy because I know I had just begun the journey back to my hometown  to be with my mother, scared of how I was going to find her.  Two months had past since the last time I had seen her and her body was now three quarters filled with Chemo and perhaps the results would shock me; the hairlessness, the skin and bones, the red checks, the fatigue.

I felt tense, more tense than usual.

A man stood, ruffling through the overhead compartment, A flight attendant stood by with a concerned look on her face. She was glancing at the attendant that sat behind me (we were the very last seat on the plane, in front of the bathroom and the flight attendants seat). The man got what he was searching for in his bag, a small cardboard box, and he sat back down.

Another man got up. He walked to the bathroom (behind me) and on the way he smiled at Z. I smiled back. As he shut the door another man walked up to the bathroom to wait. He stood for a moment. The seat belt light went one. A flight attendant approached him. I felt her stress. Sir, I need you to wait for the bathroom in your seat, the caption has turned on the fasten seat belts. We’ll let you know when the bathroom is unoccupied.

He went back to his seat. The man in the bathroom comes out and sits down in his row, 6-7 seats in front of mine. I can easily see the back of his head, wrapped in religious garb, not sure but I am assuming, a Sikh.

Over the loudspeaker, before anyone could get up to know occupy the vacant toilet: Attention passengers, our lavatories are closed. They are both malfunctioning. We apologize, but nobody is to use the bathroom until further notice.

Mama, I gotta poop. Maaaamaaaa, I gotta poooooop.

Sweetie. Not now. I am concerned. I am intuitive. I feel the stress on this plane. I look around. Everyone else seems fine, happy, dandy.

I am concerned. I am intuitive. I feel the stress on this plane. I look around. Everyone else seems fine, happy, dandy.

I sit and wait. I am hyper aware of what the attendants are doing. Back and forth they travel down the aisle. Hushed phone calls. Whispers. One of them whispers to the man directly next to me across the aisle, a long haired from grunge town. He nods his head. He carries a slight, painted on smile across his face. Minutes pass. She whispers again to him.

Finally. What the fuck is going on? Perhaps I didn’t say the F word, holding Z in my arms, I tend not to swear, but the word rang in my voice. I knew something was up. I knew something felt wrong.

The attendant walks away. The man across from me ensures me all is okay, he is just has to keep an eye out for the bathroom, making sure nobody goes in it.

Oh. For a moment that sounded okay. Made sense. He’s back here next it with me. He can be a guard for the supposed over-flowing shit water.

More whispers. More walking. More hushed phone calls.

No, this is still not right. My whole body tenses. My heart is pounding. Mia is crying that her ears are “puffy”.

We seem to be about 2 or so hours into the flight. Only about a ½ hour to go.

I double check where the girls are, because where I am is not good. My palms are sweating. My throat is lumped. I have this bizarre smile on my face, plastered. In my heart, I know I am going to be okay, feel this deeply, but somewhere in between my heart and my head that feeling is shifted and I am quite sure this is it: we’re going down.

Mia is still complaining about her clogged ears, “puffy, mama! Yawning doesn’t work!” I pass her come. She seems pleased with this. Chew baba, chew the gum and your puffy ears will pop open.”

Sula is happily drawing her spirals on the pad of paper. Over and over again she draws little circular shapes, tiny, intricate. They remind me of the end of a fire dance, the small signatures that I spun just as the fire was going out. Somewhere between sand swirls and Sanskrit. I get lost in her spirals, wondering if these will last time I will see her draw. She looks up at me and smiles. And in her silly little voice reminds me, Mama I gotta go poo. I tell her the bathroom is still broken, but not to worry, soon.

I crank my body all the way around. I demand to know what going on.

The attendants look at each other. They look at me.

And then I hear a whole lot of words like: tipped off, suspicious activity, bomb scares, don’t worry, we stopped them, surprise landing, police, back door, arrests….
I look to the man across from me.  Is everything going to be alright, I more beg than ask.  Yeah, I hope so.  I think it’s just a bad case of profiling.  At least I hope it is.  I hope. They asked me to watch a man a few rows up, to see what he was doing with his hands, so far he just has them folded on his lap.  But he did have some kind of box earlier…

And all I could say was I will never fly again.

* 

And so to make a long story a bit shorter. We did a crazy-ass landing, heading down, and then back up and then straight back down. in silence, no warning, no friendly voice on the speaker telling us we were descending into the hot-ass desert with temperatures hot enough to cook a small baby. The back doors flew open and Police came storming on the plane, five darker skin men were arrested. The rest of the plane spoke in whispers, looking around, not knowing what was happening. We’re sorry about this, but due to unusual circumstances, please stay seated on the aircraft until we inform you it is safe to leave. Five men in cuff walk by me, I try to look in their eyes. If you are all innocent men, I am so sorry, so sorry for this humiliation. If you’re not and you want to hurt me and my kids, I’ll fucking kill you.

Twenty minutes later and 5 condoms, tied and filled with a little liquid were removed from the garbage of the bathroom that was directly behind my seat. Can my daughter go to the bathroom now? Yes, yes. Go ahead. As we squeeze back around them, I see they are wearing the gloves, holding on to the condoms.

As we squeeze back around them, I see they are wearing the gloves, holding on to the condemns.

Condoms?

Not just condoms.

I get it. I think. I’m just never flying again.

Ma’am, please don’t be scared to fly. We are in the business of keeping you safe. It’s our job.

Oh yeah, I get it. I get it. My whole body shaking as I try to get the kids off the plane and walk down the steps onto the runway. The air here is thick with heat, that long ago yet fimilar sensation of stepping into an oven; my breath has to deepen to fill my lungs, my eyes have to squint from the rays. I take on a whole new meaning of sweat.

Wow! It’s hot here, Mama!!! I’m so hot!

In somewhat of a state of shock, we begin our stay in the desert for a few days. The whole time I call the airlines to get information on what happened, what was in the condoms, who the men were. But there was no info to be given. I took upon the Anxious, The Scared, The Stressed. I felt like I was suffering post-trauma stress. I actually thought about renting a car and just driving me and the girls back home, back to my little safety net of a home; bright and yellow and filled with flowers and rivers streaming…and berries, all those berries! The light winds of the valley, the twinkling of sun bouncing of the green leaves and mountainsides, the mountains that surround and protect me…I wanted to go back. How quickly my No Fear and my I Don’t Give A Shit get erased by my utter humanness, my fragility, my need to stay alive.

I had to mine for the amount of trust I needed to continue on, climbing on four more planes until I was to finally be back home. If it wasn’t the thought of my mother waiting for me in her chair back in NY, I’d never stepped onto that plan going East. And if it wasn’t for the love and desire I had to be back with the big girls, I’d never would have stepped foot on that plane going back West. And that final ride, the thought of my home, here, my man…I just took a breath and got on it. My rituals done with more reverence and faith.

And so here is what Allegiant Air finally has to tell me: We couldn’t connect any of the men on the flight to the items found in the trash. As for the items (the condoms) found, we are still researching and getting information on that.

And so my questions are: extreme paranoia and racial profiling? A true threat to our lives? A huge mistake? A lesson for me to trust Fate; when it’s my time to crash, I just might.

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sex. (a rant i will regret posting no doubt)

May 4, 2008

When I was contacted by Current TV last month to be part of a project involving the dictation of sex diaries in a nifty little digital-cam I asked, why?


Why on earth would anyone be interested in the sex life of an 8 week post-partum mother of three?  A post-partum depressed new mother of three? What sort of sick show is this?

Our viewers are just about on the cusp to commit, to marriage and perhaps parenthood.  This can give them a taste of what it’s really like.
***
In glimpses here and there, for the last month, I’d share into a small digital camera. I’d go on walks through the woods when the big girls snoozed in the double stroller and the littlest one bound tightly around my front, drooling into my cleavage and  I would talk into a camera  while hiking up a hill. Sometimes in the car a thought would come to me and I’d pop open The Flip, knowing the hum of the road passing underneath would be heard on the recording making myself less than audible.  At night I’d sneak into the bathroom and sit on the floor privately sharing my thoughts on sex.  Regard less of where I was, the same thing usually came out of my mouth, before anything else:  shit, I’m tired…And then I’d continue to talk but never really about my sex life because, I’ll be honest here, I don’t have one.  Not really, not yet. Not in the typical penetration, body entwined with body, orgasmic kind of way.  And that’s a taste of what it’s really like.   I am exactly 3 months post-partum now and I can honestly say that sex isn’t the last thing on my mind,  but it certainly isn’t the first, or the tenth, or the twentieth either.   From 1 to 100, it’s got to be about 65 and perhaps that was obvious  in my so-called Sex Diaries. At one point when communicating with the Creative Force in charge of this Current TV project,  she mentioned that she was interested in quality over quantity. 

For a moment there I wanted to scream: QUALITY?  Like how utterly sexy it is to drink 1 cup of nasty tasting oils and a handful of pills and a million drops of tincture every morning, hoping and praying the despair and depression stay away for one more day? Sexy like having so many dirty dishes exploding out of the sink, nothing is left in the drawers and cupboards, leaving the only clean thing to cut apples is a newly sharpened filet knife? And how sexy it was to the get cut by a filet knife, blood dripping on apples, but being in such a hurry that I just licked the blood off and served it to them anyway? And the the sexy 5 small meals and 2 baths (none of which were for me), 3 loads of laundry, a trip to 2 different markets, one stop at a kids creative movement class, 24 ounces of milk production and feeding (in an array of on-the-go positions), exactly ½ hour to check emails, get a smidge of writing done, pay bills and meet with a mortgage broker (with all three kids) before finally getting to  have some down time playing 2-4 year old style dress-up in play silks that smelled like someone had rubbed them with week old cottage cheese? How sexy is that? But for some real quality I better talk about the steamy hot sex I had in 17 different positions in 3 different rooms with 6 full orgasims and after we were done, we continued to have hours of afterplay that turned into foreplay and then we did it again and can you believe that none of the girls woke up to my high volume ecstatic moans or his primal grunts?  Or did she want more of a realistic sense of quality; we fucked for 6.7 minutes and then passed out cold but hey, at least we fucked and maybe even a little milk squirted him in the eye…he likes that.  Or even more along the lines of a full-time mother quality; I finally agreed to blow him after ½ hour of listening to his whining and begging for me to get him off and the whole time all i could think about was if my favorite pair of pants that fit where in the dryer or still in the wash.

And yet none of those sex scenes make up the quality meat in my life.  Except the passed out cold part.  And so that is what my month long of sex diaries was about: the truth.  Personal truth is quality.

Recording almost every day for a month wasn’t easy, especially since most days I have to fight for time to take a piss in private. So what the camera will play back is the real me, my real life.  And I just assume my realness has got to be quite disturbing for those who have a different vision of what living  as a sexual being and a new mother is like; those who think sex lives won’t change and their libido won’t shift and their attraction to the person they used to throb for has turned into a distant pitter.  I don’t know many mothers in my post partum position who are wearing garter belts to bed, holding a big old dildo in one hand and handcuffs in the other (If you are? Can I come over?) and having video quality sex let alone sex on a regular basis at all.  And really, sex isn’t even close to what I want right now, it’s not what my body or soul or spirit asks for.  And I am not suggesting that’s what anybody was dmeanding of me to diary about,  but I highly doubt they ("the creatives" for the vlogging) got what they thought they wanted by inviting me to participate.  My fantasies involve using big-people words again and sleeping eight hours straight and someone inventing a self-cleaning kiddy potty. The small bits of my life that I shared for this project were rooted in the moment, interrupted most of the time, sloppy all of the time, bags under the eyes and knotty hair, wearing the same clothes day after day, cervical cap untouched in original box:  this is what my life is.   

Now it wasn’t always like this, it’s not like I am some unkempt prude.

I won’t go into my sexual history, but for the first 27 months of my relationship with my man we just stayed in bed full-time, and it was the kind of love that was best-seller how-to-book hot.  I had fallen into a pit of hot lava love. Something about his double Scorpio nature, his drummer and sculptor hands, his tattoos, his deep sea diving, his adoration for a girl with a bottom, his ability to flip a record over while inside me,  and his obvious devotion to even the most manic parts of me;  I. Could. Not. Get. Enough.  And apparently neither could he.  We did 3 times a night.  We did it 2 more times in the morning.  We’d call in sick to fuck during El Nino season. We’d tangle in passion on fallen trees and at the beach, in small resorts and under the stars in a yellow tent.   We did it on friend’s floors and parent’s bathrooms.  We used toys and foods and fabrics and wax.  We did not have three small children.  I don’t even think we had a dog yet.

And now that we do have kids?  What could I possibly reveal on camera that could compare to the romping of our early twenties? Or the long tantric evenings just before the kids were conceived? The funniest thing is I never had to speak (on camera) of what life was like after kids.  I’d start to talk about anything sex-in-theme on camera and would be interrupted within 1 minute by a crying baby, a screaming toddler standing in a puddle of pee, or a child frantically trying to pull too small tights over their too big jeans. The camera got turned on and off, cutting my streams of thought in half and then in half again, to attend to a child. Quality thoughts turned into many small and randomd snipets; it became quantity.  The quality needs to be found inside the bits and pieces of my fragmented life. 

But there has been an awakening that happened for me with motherhood.  And it’s good and real, too and I would be doing a diservive to myself and all mothers who allowed themselves to ripen and ruby as they became initiated.

There is a strong and not so subtle sexuality that motherhood seems to harvest.  Underneath the spit-up and yellow grainy poops, the elastic waistbands that now fill the wardrobe, and the collection of “comfy” shoes on the shelf, the glam-less eyelashes looking into the rearview mirror behind the seat of the minivan and in between making almond butter banana boats, there is a cord running from my head down through my root, pulsing with a new kind of Hot.  It’s raw and different, not billboard model or lingerie catalogue or Betty Page pin-up or adult movie star.  It’s more like the suppleness of velvet, the interior flesh of the womb has been molded and lived in and even though it’s empty now, it’s redness, it’ spiral, it’s secret has become me.  I have had something, a taste of the apple, a chance at creation, a reason to moan life forth and the guts to stand there and do it; knowing well enough I am playing the game of Life and Death but caring so much that I decide to take my turn in the endless circle.  My body pulses with a purpose as the home ground, the wet ground, the growing ground, the battleground stripped with wavy scars and cascading curves.  It holds breasts heavy with milk and a yoni with a faint yet lingering scent of bloody and earthy birth.  And while my body expanded with motherhood, slowly, at its own pace comes back to a version of me; my ribs reveal themselves under my thinning flesh, I have cheekbones again, I can sit on the floor and get back up on my own,  I lean into a backbend and fold forward and grab onto my toes. I lie flat on my stomach.  It may not be hot by today’s standards, but it’s primal and it’s intuitive and its a greatly provocative to allow it to be all that it has been; lover, shelter, warrior, mother.   Its not Movie Star Mother On Tabloid Cover, but my type of motherhood turns me on.  It’s dirty, exhausting and it’s real.

When I smear a bit of red gloss across my lips and thread metal earrings through my ears and drop thick amber oil on my wrists, and slide my lime green aviator sunglasses across my eyes, I feel it intensely. Sometimes when I sit down to nurse my baby and milk rushes down and relief comes over me I morph so powerfully wet and nourishing and attractive and needed I am almost over fulfilled.  On good days when we walk through the store with my hair a little brushed and all three kids and myself are in such smooth flow and together we hold and examine fresh ripe produce and decide what to make for dinner and maybe even nibble on a bit of dark chocolate while in the check-out line, it lives in me and comes through me and the hormones are wildy tasty, roaringly loud.  When I open up and enjoy parenting, even in the thick of screaming tantrums and unacceptable kicking, I become pure energy, vibration of mother-knowledge; I hold it as my own sensual prowess. When I collapse in bed at night, a few breaths away from a deep sleep and my cold feet are wrapped around his and my face is buried in his soft back, it’s there heating us both up through to the next day.   When I think about how I pushed my third daughter out with screams and howls and my nails digging into the microfiber of my couch and my head thrown , my back arched, somewhere between Hell and Ecstasy, it’s there. This is my life; and it’s all really sexy to me.  But it’s not SEX.

 It was easy to judge myself: my life has become painfully boring and sexually dry, and it’s unhealthy. we used to make time for sex even for a super-quickie, here and there. 34 years old and in some sort of prime and I haven’t done it in a very, very (very) long time.  Why don’t we create more time for sex? Is it just the exhaustion or does it go deeper and a place we’re too scared to explore?  Why don’t we decide to retreat into the bedroom and get kinky? Instead we fall onto the couch with the laptop in front of us, excited to catch up on Lost episodes? When we do get a sitter, which is so rare, why don’t we go somewhere and have sex in the minivan on some lonely forest road instead of going to the brewery to have beers and talk about our future in our new house, new music we like, writing projects that are pending, the behavior of our four year old, politics, the weather? Oh.  Yeah.  We just had a baby. 

The baby part makes it easy to release the judgments with a few stumbles and tries; we can’t beat ourselves up for having our arms full of life.  I spent many years where sexual exploration was at the forefront of my relationships. Being someones partner now involves so many other passions besides how many times I cum.  It involves raising children.  It involves integrating into a new community.  It involves just trying to stay good friends and harmonious roommates with each other.  And it involves sexy moments; glances when one of us steps out of the shower, slick with water and slathered in oil, or butt smacks when he wears the silly hot pink American Apparel underwear Mia picked out for him on his birthday.  It’s him looking at my cleavage while we sit at dinner and my new big milk boobs are spilling out my too tight shirt from all day nursing or watching him teach Mia and Sula the progression of ska to modern dancehall through record flipping and dancing and singing.  It’s when we chop carrots together to make a soup .  It involves loving my body for the work it’s done, the temple it has been for me and my children; the way it has opened up regardless of how scared I am to be truly seen.  Sometimes it’s the too tight pants I wear and how the seam rubs into my clitoris, or maybe the silkiness of the shirt brushing up against my own nipples, or seeing  a person whose energy makes me turn my head and suck in my breath.  It’s finally buying  a home on ½ acre; fertile land surrounded by rivers and mountains gives him a hard-on and certainly makes me dripping wet. Our climax is sitting late night on the couch with Z in our laps and cooing with her, nuzzling our noses in her double chin and smelling between her stinky toes. Feeling so in love with our children and landing such a lucky life, more charmed as it ages;  not perfect by any means, but it is what it is and accepting that, with humor and tenderness,  it’s what makes our crotches tingle.   Our quality is being with our kids in each moment; experiencing the other and ourselves authentically in any way we can.  It’s erotic and naked and revealing; no penetration required.

 ***

And I am not saying that soon I won’t be one of the many people who are considered sexually active by today’s standard.  These times will pass quickly and the exhaustion will fade and our time will be freed and some hot sticky night, no doubt we will begin humping again.  But for now we aren’t because we are doing other things, making other things, loving in other ways.  That is how it really is.  I’m sure Current TV isn’t super excited for paying me to say that kind of stuff every day for a month, but I gave them the truth.

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my wow.

April 11, 2008

I’ve heard so many many woman sigh and say wow that was bad. Looking back, it was worse than I thought it was.  And it lasted a year.  2 years.  It still hits me like a mac truck and I gave birth almost three years ago.

I’m too careful of a person to sigh my sigh now, and shake my head back and forth and say  my wow in the past tense.  The heavy sheet of all things not pretty seems to be gone, but whose to say what’s around that corner.  I’ll give half a sigh and readily admitt it has been hard and I never expected to feel like such shit.

Why do we rarely talk about it?  Prepare ourselves and our families for it?  We spend oodles of time reading about pregnancy and birth before the fact, but what initiates us to handle the state of potential depression?  Or is the depression the final initiator, the last test before we get our Mother of The Moment trophy?

I can hide it well.  Which makes me doubt I am even worthy of the title; Post Partum Depressed.  I wipe my face clean and hide the amount of effort it takes me to pick up each foot and put it in front of the other.  I spend time with my family and pretend I am hadnling it all, exhausted, but centered and strong. Who wants to hear, as I hold my perfect daughter in my arms, that I feel bleak? Weak? Nothing? Fear? With moods that swing as fast as my daughter does at the playground? I am a beautiful new mother of my third daughter and I hold it all together and like my sister said when I called trying to subtly hint that I may be living in my own personal collapsable world

You’re not the only who has three kids.  Think of it that way. You’re not alone.

And yeah, that’s not really what I meant.  Three kids or 20, I am very alone. This is the epitome of alone.

And I suppose if while we discussed the pregnancy and all the protein we have been eating and the sex of the baby or whether or not a waterbirth would be in the plan, someone could have thrown in there: Prepare, you might feel like you’ll wanna curl up and die sometime after the birth.  Have support in place.  Have herbs all ready.  Hire help.  Call and make a tenative appointment for marriage counseling and probably throw one in there for child psychology, because with all the yelling and moping and emotional messiness, everyone around you will need professional help, too. Maybe I could have spared me girls my ugliest moments.  Maybe my husband would not be so bruised.  Maybe I would think all this is normal and not feel defeated.

But I never thought.  Not me.  Not with the homebirth and the yoga and the herbs and meditation.  Not me, I paid my depression dues back when I was 21.  Now I’m a Birth Warrior, A Mama in Charge.  I laugh in my face, as if I am protected from this pain, this realness, this life. Reason: unknown.  Source; the mind, the heart, the seed.  Remedy; acceptance (and rest, food, drink, time alone).

 It’s been a long time, Mama.  A long time since I knew you in Arizona.

I didn’t ask her what she meant but in my heart I knew.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been my old self.  This one, the one who mothered like that.  Not the one I have been these days. These days I’ve been the sharky thought.

But like I said, it lifts.  It’s lifting.  I am not ready to call it done, because I know it can creep up like the night upon dusk and in a split moment I am gone.  But as I step up and out, feel life at some surface, I am  beginning to think this depression I came face to face with may be the greatest teacher I’ve ever had.  Ever.  And isn’t that kind of beautiful?

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one day at a time.

March 20, 2008

Finding rhythm each day has proven to be a challange with three.  I repel schedule and routine, but rhythm is something that keeps all of us interested, aware and present.  There was only a handful of places or things the two girls and I would attempt to do outside the house in AZ; picnics at parks when the weather was cool enough.  When is was scortching hot, lazy mornings at the coffee joint that bled into cozy afternoons spent next door reading endless books at the library (which probably, besides people, is the most missed ‘thing’ about AZ.  Scottsdale Library is truly phenomenal).   Besides being in a new place, and having a new kid, and living in a delicate and sometimes pretty dark state of mind post-partum, I have been rhythmless.  I haven’t been able to figure out anthing yet.  I need time to heal, process, and ease into this new life,  but it’s been wearing on me, getting old, this not knowing what to do or how to get dressed.  I’m getting sick of being bound by this state of indifference to sadness, frustration to anger.  It’s time to crack open the paralyzing armor, or at least poke out from underneath the covers.

Today’s was good.  Mia to school.  The rest of us walk 3 miles to a park.  Play.  Walk back.  Pick Mia up.  Fast trip home (insist girls all wait in the car), grab no-prep to-go lunch.  Head to the beach for a picnic of apples, strawberries, cheese and raw cashews.  Walk to the bookstore.  Cookies and tea and browse through books.  Home.  Play.  Pull out stuff for dinner. Wait for B to get home to make dinner.  Make life easy and wear Z the whole entire time, except for daiper changes.  Breath.  Laugh. PLay music. Watch the moon get bigger. Bath. Sing The Beatles Blackbird 5 times. Bed. Today was good.  No dizzy spells or anxiety.  No stuffing my face in a couch cushion and cry/screaming.  No sobbing phone calls to husband or friends or sisters.  No wishing my life away.  No yelling.  Living and trying to function so close to a birth is fragile.  In our tribeless (literal) state of a culture, I honor my hard times, my depression and overwhelming moments.  And I celebrate when I can slide back into my comfortable skin, the mask I know intimately and I really enjoy wearing. Happy and Mellow.  Balanced and carefree.  Flexible and gentle.  Strong and energized, maybe even a little hyper.  Silly. Dancy. Singy.   I got there today. It felt fantastic and it was just normal.  Me.  Today I felt what it’s like to dive in and enjoy being a mother again, because the past month has been a stuggle to see the light, no matter what there have been days where I felt like a stranger in my own body, my own life.  One day at a time. 

*

Mia cut her hair again.  When one is preoccupied with a newborn one will sometimes give a suspecious four year old kid craft scissors and paper and glue for fun and entertainment and then not really pay attention to what they are doing and go do a load of laundry (okay given her history -or histories- perhaps there is no real excuse for not watching her like a hawk).

Her short side:

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Her long side:

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People ar very impressed with her sense of style.  I request they don’t encourage it.  Really.  I like the cut, too, sorta mod meets Johnny Scissorhands.  But please.  Don’t encourage it.

Punk Rock Warrior and Berry Eater:

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