the end.

If you want to keep in touch, please visit my website

http://samanthaupdegrave.wordpress.com/

xoxo

 

(PS — my life with OWL is still crazy-beautiful-hectic-harder-than-hell and on-going, but this blog ran it’s course a ways back. Thank you to all the folks who read and celebrated and helped me / us.)

an essay on the interdependence project blog

I wrote an essay for the Interdependence Project Seattle Blogger Group. You can read it here.

http://www.theidproject.org/blog/samantha-claire/2012/10/10/compassion-wisdom-and-teetee-turtle-idp-seattle-blogger-group

 

intimus and my Bodhisattva eve

It is late considering how early I have to be up and out tomorrow, considering that OWL didn’t feel well at bedtime and what the night holds is unknowable. And yet, here I am with a freshly carved potato stamp transcribing lines from Adrienne Rich poems onto pieces of paper and discovering that intimacy is derived from the same root as intestine, trying to remember my most true self, to locate those pieces that were misplaced along the way, the ones that splintered and marched off at age three, five, eight, fifteen. Do I only flow in one direction, or in many?

I sat for 10 minutes, staring at the thing I will offer up tomorrow when I take the Bodhisattva Vow, the thing I will let go of, the thing that stands between me and my ability to see what is. Specks of gold glimmered in the candlelight. Its heft was visible and I realized that it could not be folded as I’d hoped to do. I will have to present it as is, not made into a generic shape that can hide its interior.

Khyung Nyi-ö feels so foreign and yet familiar. Too big and yet tailored to my shifting body.

the blue of distance

what i learned on monday

You can show kindness to anyone, anytime.

You can take a graceful leap over a puddle and dance with rush hour.

You can love both when it does and does not matter.

But you simply will not, cannot, return your library books on time.

too many books

I want to write everything down, so as not to forget, not to lose the pages of shattered bones and missteps, the descriptions of grief and marked time, the illogical holding and eventual letting go, that coming to know things only loss can show you. How else can I learn all that others have to share? OWL runs down hills, out of arms reach. The stacks grow and multiply.

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.

winter hibernation

It is almost over. I promise.

xo

a year

And that, as they say, was that.

and also here. in falling at 35<35.

My essay In Falling is published here, through the Shambhala Publications 35<35 project, personal essays from Buddhist practitioners under the age of 35.

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

something i wrote was published elsewhere

Notes from the Laundry Pile. Written a year ago. Published 2 days ago.

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