An unexpected phone call and miles. Essays and meetings over dinners. A quarrel on the stairs and the sweetness of reunion. I want to write my  words. My heart moves faster than my hands. I am restless, out of breath, walking to work, late, skipping over potholes. My boots scuff brick, concrete, asphalt. The wind lifts a corner of my coat, snakes through my dress, slip, tights. Words I cannot say.

xo

http://www.35u35.com/submissions/in-falling/

PS’s & dedications:

*so so so much gratitude to the lovely Ms. Meredith Arena for loving me through this madness

*loves to my sister Cindy for listening out loud at the EXACT right moment

*congrats to my brother Chris for the courage to share and be himself in the world

*and always to OWL, for saving & enriching my life

http://depts.washington.edu/stratus1/

In the face of the flight from the radio and the yellow kitchen table, chipped and marred and worn thin by history, I write 6 pages by hand and feel the start of a new place, or rather of finding what was already lurking beneath, in wait. A darkness and frankness seen with open eyes, run on sentences and the skillful use of commas. A mind of madness punctuated by an occasional line of grace. Of forgiveness and audacity.

Falling asleep, I lose myself  in fantasy as distraction from the unceasing panic. The boy who kissed me last Tuesday and then called the very next day. The anticipated sweetness of seeing Seth and Geoff next month, collapsing into Vermont, in tears, (because I’m a girl who always cries). Sky Lake Lodge. The battle between the simple letters of M.A. and M.F.A., of Boulder Utopia and standing up right here. This may be my final flight of madness, and it will either kill me or I’ll pull into a new form – still me but less blown over and torn apart. At times I cannot honestly tell which it will be.

And when I think I have nothing to say, I’ll keep writing it down anyway, in one sentence, 22 words or less.

With a lowered gaze my eyes wouldn’t betray what a stalled hand shows. Lack of movement, of invention. In that stillness the absence of intimacy, of connection. Tip to fiber stains the page in blue with unintelligible marks, poor penmanship, lost life & memories. Only remnants remain.

You are, maybe, a writer I write to myself just before sleep.

The next night, I refine my previous statement. You are, mostly, a writer, because it’s high time I assert some control over the ability to self-define. I walk and ride my bike to get familiar with self-propelling forward motion.

Then I tell myself you are a writer because I’m trying to practice maitri. I am trying to say to myself that I forgive you. I am trying to encourage this one small ounce of faith that has yet to extinguish, even if it’s fake it ’til you make it.

Walking home from the store, stinging behind my eyeballs from a this darkness that has re-enveloped me, born of a terror I’ve yet to name or befriend, your voice. A sweet imprint on an answering machine, across miles. To say hello. Been busy but all is well. Looking forward to some time off next week. A sweetness that will always be. And for a moment it is all so simple. The next moment it is mixed with tears from missing two amazing friends.

You are a writer. This is not decided by the New York Times or The Sun or that anthology you haven’t heard back from. It is not decided by the people who think you should definitely not get an MFA or the people who don’t invite you to interview for a job that you know you would absolutely kick ass at. It isn’t even determined by the one person who loves you most of all, who refuses to let you on the computer without insisting on “watch da whales jumping.”

Another two days pass. Sob wet confessions behind closed doors, absent of logic or rationale. Touch on the old, older, oldest. The lies I believe over and over again without realization. Some of the strings that keep me trapped, tied up in the past-never-to-be-future. My mistrust of all things shines through and illuminates an even still deeper fear that although I’ve come to whisper it time to time out loud (and only to a paid professional) I can only touch for a moment at a time. One breathe at a time then hold the rest.

And suddenly that fire that was consuming me is like smoke. It is long and dark and trailing, its toxins soaked deep within my skin and organs, but smoke nonetheless. Transparent patches. I feel its heat and thickness but walk right through it, still unsure if I’ll ever find the clearing.

In yoga with a new teacher, I find my Warrior after months of it feeling gone. I move consciously from a diagonal lunge, with intention, into Warrior III without using my hand. My foot firmly planted, stable on the earth. My leg shakes like nothing I’ve ever felt – a tremor rising from the inside, up and outward – but I am steady. Prana. I glide into Standing Split, light touch to the floor. We rise, Exhalted. I am still steady. In transition. Prana revealed.

On an island, I read a poem out loud and discover exactly what I want it to feel like if I fall in love.

I hike narrow & steep trails in falling light with OWL on my back because I promised him a waterfall. We make it back before dark.

I remember unexpectedly touching the lips of a friend days before he moved thousands of miles away, the experience of true a moment where the past dissolved and the future didn’t exist. A feeling that, I now suspect, may exist out there, even for me, in that shaky unknowable someday.

I tell myself it is okay to touch the tiny beautiful things that are offered to me.

I try to remember that betrayal and the willingness to stay open in light of a past that’s been undermined and a future I don’t always trust is the gateway to the present moment. That I am on the threshold.

I bathe my baby in a dish pan set atop a picnic table in the woods next to a lake.

I sit in circles and lines and listen to the breath of friends & strangers — sometimes rapid, sometimes breathless, sometimes wet with tears — and join the chorus where emptiness and form make nobility.

I promise to slow down the constant testing.

I ride my bike for miles.
20.
16.
204
5.
11.
28.
9.
(And learn the value of bike shorts & espresso goo shots.)

I practice functional.noble silence.

I bask in the richness of our friendships. Meals made by human hands. Wine in the park. An unexpected (always invited) house guest. Evenings with babies and late night with mamas. Wheels over trails. Cushions in a row. Late night / early morning messaging.

I learn the words to Little Blue Truck.

I practice transforming the many mishaps.

I write in fits & starts. In fragments with a sense of things that will never see the light of day. A lot of notes, nothing coherent. Journals and notepads and folded sheets of loose leaf paper.

I submit 4 essays and hang out with an empty inbox.

I buy a new dress & plan for a picnic.

I want to unmake the map.

Instead, I uncover some unhealed pieces. Through these sides that surround my core, I feel armor chip off.

“I lost my warrior,” I admit in yoga class. “I had it for years, and now it’s gone.”

“It’s not gone,” AP assures me, “you’re warrior’s probably in transition.” She looks at the other women in the room and asks if anyone else has gone through this. You start practice and it’s a challenging pose. Then you really find it, and it’s easy. Then it transitions and it’s challenging again. They all nod, some laugh gently.

If you’ve ever been divorced, or became any type of parent, or lost your job in a fucked economy or your house, maybe you’ve had the experience of thinking transition is total bullshit, a lie people tell you so you’ll just buck up, or to alleviate their own fears. Or it feels like a false promise you fall for again and again. Or maybe that’s just my view on this particular day of this particular month.

But I work with it in these untouched sides of my body. I let my teacher readjust my heel, the length of my stance, my hip points. I flow through the movements as if they can erase lines, erase meanings, make me visible. I wonder what it is like to feel beautiful. I think about miles and cannot remember the route I walked home yesterday or exactly where Vermont is on a map.

I wonder who I am really trying to protect, OWL or me?

Fall asleep to the heartbreak of harshness, how we diminish and mistrust ourselves so deeply, how we salt our wounds at every turn. How we can love anyone but ourselves.

Awake in the courageousness of my heart, aware that I am good enough to be the mama I’ve become, the mama OWL needs. Aware that in this moment, perhaps that’s all there is, and that is enough. I awake aware that the unwavering presence of goodness that is so hard to touch still resides inside, and I am grateful that the week has illuminated it so vividly. But there is more work to do, always more do to.

And so it is just not time. Not for this.

With breakfast tea in hand, discover this quote, posted by the dear Mrs. Marit:

LOVE: when your energetic heart expands out of your body so far it explodes joy and color all over the world around you in such a way that all your beauty is reflected back at you. then your spirit says ‘Ahhh… that’s the purpose.’*

And so it goes, a cross town train and latitudes, into laughter and forgetting.

Regard all dharmas as dreams. Flip a card. Abandon all hope of fruition. Shuffle. Be grateful to everyone. Shuffle. Begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself. 

(*from a Mountain Sage Medicine postcard picked up at Mother’s Market Pace in Hood River, OR)