Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Important!!!!--STUFF

Hear ye, Hear ye,
all Americans (and others) Everywhere!
Tune In to
www.storyofstuff.com
to find out where all of the coolest gadgets,
the latest fads, and the hottest toys,
come from, where they go to,
and just how happy they make us in the long run.
Consider it
a little gift from me to you,
during these holy-daze.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

A Gift

If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting will look,
lift your face and say,
like this.
When someone mentions the gracefulness of the night sky,
climb up on the roof and dance and say,
like this.
If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "god's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward her or him
keep your face there close,
like this.
When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly lossen knot by knot
the strings of your robe,
like this.
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead
don't try to explain "the miracle"
kiss me on the lips,
like this. Like this.
When someone asks what it means to "die for love,"
point here.
It someone asks how tall I am, frown and
measure with your fingers the space between
the creases on your forehead.
The soul sometimes leaves the body,
then returns.
When someone doesn't believe,
walk back into my house.
Like this.
When lovers moan
they're telling our story.
Like this.
I am a sky where spirits live,
stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.
When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in her hand.
Like this.
How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?
Huuuuu.
How did Jacob's sight return?
Huuuuu.
A little wind cleans the eyes.
Huuuuu.
And when Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge of the door
to surprise us,
like this.

Mevlana Jelauddin Rumi was a prolific Sufi poet
who spun around the earth over 800 years ago.
"Your essence is hidden in dust.
To reveal its splendor
you need to burn in the fire of love."

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Mama



“Traditionally, new students of Zen are cautioned against meditating too close to the open sea, since the passion of the tumultuous ocean is so overpowering that it may be too difficult to quiet one’s inner being. Better to sit in meditation next to a stream, where its gentle energies can become more peacefully assimilated. And perhaps even better is to sit in a garden of stones resembling islands surrounded by etched gravel resembling the sea, to find that still point, that unwobbling pivot from which any obstacle may be confronted from a position of unflappable strength.”
--Abd Al-Hayy Moore, Zen Rock Gardening



“Where are you from?” A question that precedes an innumerable number of lengthy replies, while its answers hint at a deeper subtlety lying just below the surface of the initial asking. When we inquire this of another, are we asking as to where a person’s body first came into being on this planet, as in the geographical location of a birth? Or, do we really want to know, where home is, - that palpable location of nostalgic memory and that blissful illusion of nativity? If “home is where the heart is” are we not technically home no matter our situation and circumstance?
I was born in a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. While residing in that northern clime, in a town named Scarborough, indelible moments were seared into my tiny child’s recollection. At the time, we, my four-member tribe and myself, lived in a three-story town home. On the bottom floor, in the basement, half of which had been allocated for the children’s playroom, sat a regulation sized Air Hockey Table (still a favorite to this day) along with all of the toys and games that three children, each four years a part, could possibly need or want. Within these safe confines, my two older siblings and I spent hours, - stuffing a poor, helpless hamster into our ‘Little People’ villages, while birds, that had found themselves trapped within our air duct, made a loud ruckus on the metal pipes as well as on our amalgamated childhood imaginations.
Our neighborhood was a closed community, within which two parks and a pool were located. The ‘big kids’ (a demographic that just barely included my eleven-year old brother) had their own park, which primarily consisted of an 8’ slide. In a large group, the big kids would commute the short distance to school, walking back and forth together while stopping along the way at the market (on the rare occasion when my sister and I accompanied them on these trips, we were always treated to sticks of Popeye gum that resembled cigarettes in their shape and were coated with a white powder that, when blown on, would usher forth a plume of what looked like smoke). Us smaller kids also had our own park, in which a sand box, a slide, swings, and other treasure troves of childhood play were kept, and on our way to and from school we were watched over with independence and care by the big kids. On one such excursion, we had all stopped at a nearby local haunt, where my sister was pushing me in a swing and the older kids were busy with their inter-gender drama. After too large of a push, I flew out of the swing and came crashing to the ground with a thud. In mere seconds, the teenagers were there to dust me off and help me up to my feet.
During the summer, the one entrance to our circular housing tract was closed to through-traffic and our own mini-Olympic games were held. There was: a bubble gum blowing contest, a Big Wheel contest, and a ‘Lil’ Hobo’ contest for the smaller children and running and bike races for the larger kids. At the conclusion of the individual pursuits, after which ribbons and trophies were awarded, a large parachute was produced and the entire community came together to watch the brightly adorned material make objects airborne. The pool, around the circumference of which was an ambling bike path, was a favored destination during the hot summer days. My siblings and my love for the water, our fearlessness around it, and our abilities to make like fish within it, were nurtured during these early years. To this day, the laughter and the trauma that this time period made room for is collectively recalled.
After four years of Canadian living, my American, and predominantly Californian, family was ready to pack up and head home. In the summer of 1981, the five of us hopped into a heavily weighted down deep purple station wagon and made that proverbial car trip west. Stopping along the way at numerous locations to sight see, to enjoy evening dips in motel pools, and to release the angst of too many people cooped up in too tight of a space, we bumped along 3,000 miles of American roadway. My sister and I would stretch out in the back where we would ask our mother for a tissue, upon which receiving we would rip it up into tiny little bits that we would stuff through the small hole in the rubber lining of the trunk door. With pleasure and glee, we would sit back and watch the small, white balls of cotton take to the air, floating on the car’s momentum and flying into the windshield of the vehicle behind us. During this time, I would also recite a commercial jingle, remembered from the days spent in front of a television screen. “Kentucky Fucky Chicken,” my tinny voice chirped out. To this, my mother would laugh uproariously.
Years later, I learned, through my older siblings, that the real reason why we fled our beloved community was because there was murmur of an indiscretion. My brother recalls talk of infidelity, between my mother and the father of a little girl, who was close to my age, and who my mother wanted to be my best friend. On a warm, autumn day, my father pulled the sagging wagon up to the gates of a seaside, sprawling condominium complex in Solana Beach, California. Life, as we had known it, changed.
We still had a community pool, idyllically located on sandy bluffs above a churning Pacific, within which we could submerge our whole bodies while temporarily forgetting the anger that was beginning to unfurl within our daily lives. However, friendship was different in this new location, as the division between the haves and the have not’s became visibly clear. At five years of age, it was not yet unacceptable that my new best friend lived in a multi-million dollar home on the hill. Unfortunately, I do not believe that either of my siblings had such luck in developing new relationships. At nine and thirteen, the hard reality of status quo and the awkwardness of not fitting within popular culture reared its ugly head. After one brief year, our parent’s had purchased a two story home in a town twenty minutes north. Life in Vista and Oceanside, for we lived right on the border of the sister cities, came to resemble more of what we had experienced while living in Scarborough.
It was in Vista where I grew through the joy of adolescence and the pain of being a teenager. During the twelve-year time span, I moved from an elementary school playground, to the hallways of one middle school, and into the lockers of the only high school I attended. Along the way, my parent’s home phone number became an effigy scrawled in black pen on bathroom stalls and haphazardly written in dozens of handmade “Sign In” books as well as in cheap phone books.
In the early to mid-eighties, our household developed a tight-knit bond with our neighbors on both sides of the fence as well as across the street. Representing a diversity of world cultures, we would come together every holiday season to break bread and toast to another new year. My family represented a blend of east coast (as my mother is from New Jersey) and west coast values along with the traditional sentiments of pre-World War I babies (my father was born in 1933, and my mother was born three months before Pearl Harbor was bombed). Our neighbors to the south were an elderly, white couple who had not produced any offspring. On the other side of us, were our Palestinian-American neighbors whose four children were in their late teens. My sister and I especially enjoyed the scent of home baked pita bread that permeated their household. Across the street was a Mexican-Italian-American family whose two children, a boy and a girl, were closer to mine and my sibling’s ages. For a number of years, we all enjoyed affable times spent in one another’s company.
Over the course of ten years, before both of my siblings flew the nest for a home located eight hundred miles north, our most favored past time was the beach. My brother was a prolific boogey boarder who would take to the waves for hours on end, paddling out past the break, where my mother, my sister, and I would all loose sight of him. My sister and I were just as adventurous in our own way, for the ocean came to be a nurturing force that would gently rock us within the ebb and flow of each tidal rhythm. Even when the ocean seemingly rollicked in thunderous passion, we knew quite well the art of duck diving under gigantic waves of white wash, grabbing a hand full of sand along the way.
On one overcast day when, instead of our mother taking us to the beach our father had, my sister and I were rough housing with one another just a few yards off of the shoreline. The sky was vacillating between a stormy gray and a more typical marine layer, when we noticed a lifeguard running up and down the beach, motioning for the swimmers to come in and out of the water. We glanced around ourselves, noting that there was not a sign of either thunder or lightning in the air. In defiance, we resumed our child’s play with delight. Soon, my sister was following suit, making a difficult to attempt beeline for the shore. Once safely upon it she turned and motioned for me to follow. “I don’t have to, if I don’t want to,” I retorted, as my head rolled around its socket. Annoyed, she pointed in a direction just beyond where I was swimming. With bated breath, I turned and saw, less than five feet away from where I was standing, a fin swimming around in circles. With a fire lit under my ass, I ran in water as fast as I ever have on that day.
In the end, the shark was dying and was just attempting to beach itself. Once all of the bathers had been accounted for, the lifeguard dove in and pulled the creature from the water. It was hoisted on to the back of a jeep and, before it was dead and the jeep driven off, I walked up and stroked the slimy skin of the dying animal. I remember being saddened by its loss yet invigorated by the small amount of time that I had spent within its company.
Under the warm rays of a yearlong southern Californian sun, the ocean was a dear playmate. Wielding a peculiarly dramatic ability to be simultaneously gentle and rough, hard and yielding, I looked forward to any and all time spent within its great belly. However, at night, I would toss and turn in fitful sleep as the ocean plagued my anxious subconscious life. A re-occurring dream that I frequently found myself trapped within was of an epic battle in which I would attempt to pull myself up a steep beach and out of the voracious claws of a hungry ocean. It would require all of my resolve and my strength to finally, after what seemingly felt like hours of struggle, beat the beast, and to land, fully collapsed and desperate for air, onto a safe harbor. In my dreams, the ocean was a controlling and domineering force, near to devouring me whole. I wanted nothing more than to escape its tight grip. I fought with all that I had, and though I always succeeded, I was left nearly spent and in complete disarray.
Like my siblings, I too flew the nest just as soon as I possibly could. In my case, like my sister’s, attending a four-year college and living in a dormitory my freshman year was the opportunity needed to escape the cycle of abuse that had wound its way around our parent’s home. As I grew into my early adulthood, I spent less and less time at the beach and in the ocean. In my mind-twenties, when my travels had taken me around the world and back, I had discovered serenity and a peace of mind within a jagged landscape of up-thrusting rock. My heart had come to reside in mountains.
Seemingly closer to the sky overhead, my eyes feasted on constellations and sweeping vistas while I channeled a little girl who would run from her parent’s house at night, to lay on sun-warmed sidewalks, and to greedily soak in a reflection of light from up above. It was an early form of meditation, for the heaviness of gravity seemingly dropped away, and I was transported to a quiet, and calm repose. I wanted nothing more than to stay in this place, forever. I wanted nothing more than to never have to return to the hurt and pain of the dualistic forces of life, pushing and pulling me in opposing directions, while ripping my heart in two and sewing it back together, time after time again.
Five years ago, I returned to San Diego living. My parents still reside in that same house, on Ridge Road, and though I make an effort not to visit, I am consistently wearied by the sadness that drips from that house’s windowpanes. However, I have recently come to consciously understand that I can either continue to choose to carry the heavy baggage of others or I can simply put it down. I have been attempting to let it all go, - to sit the duffle bag and the rolling backpack down, and to lay the suitcase and the trunk to rest.
Now, as I amble along a Pacific shoreline, I take refuge in the beach’s daily evolutions. During low tide, I walk along and discover fully intact shells that have pieces of seaweed rooted to them. I marvel in the beds of kelp that look like tide pools. And I relish the sound of seaweed popping underfoot. At high tide, I walk under the wooden beams of Crystal Pier and I reminisce about the difference in water level. I note the soft sand that provides very little to no traction. And I listen to the waves as they reverberate off of the cement-encrusted pillars. These days, I gaze upon the mighty waters and a desire to intimately know the ocean’s push and pull once again grips my being.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Pushing the Envelope

Contact Dance Class
Friday, December 21st, 7:30pm
Behind Claire de Lune’s Coffee Shop, corner of University Ave. and Kansas St. in North Park, San Diego, CA.
$10.00 for the hour and a half class,
and for admission to the Barefoot Boogie that follows (and goes until midnight).

Come join us for an evening of Contact Dance. What is Contact Dance, you ask?
It is a modern dance form that evolved in the mid-twentieth century and that involves two, or more, people maintaining a point of contact, while giving and taking weight. Some describe it as a “moving massage.” I believe that it pushes the envelope, - that it challenges an individual to move beyond preconceived notions and into the realm of “letting go.”
No matter what your skill level, this class is for everyone. During the hour and a half, it will not matter if you are a novice beginner or a seasoned dancer. We will all come together in the spirit of trying something new.
With humor and candor, we will explore simple techniques that will get us moving, first individually. At a comfortable pace, we will move towards contact with another, or others. You will not be asked to perform more than you are capable of, or wish to.
cara is a movement practitioner who, with great encouragement and positive energy, will attempt to coax you out of your shell. She promises that, if anything at all, you will have fun. Now, what more could you ask for? Come on down, and try it for yourself. You will not be disappointed.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Reconciliation


I can be the little girl, moving in the mirror.
I can be the tomboy, getting dirty outside.
I can be the baby, protected by fierce others.
I can be the virgin, giving it up to a whore.
I can be the bald-headed anarchist who fucks the police.
I can be the sigh, and the one to just say “no.”
I can be the rock climber setting routes around the world.
I can be the performer, taking center stage.
I can be the Picasso, cutting off my ear.
I can be the sonnet of a time now past.
I can be the words, and I can be the page.
I can be the smooth-skinned pin-up taking space on your wall.
I can be the superficial glance of a passing fancy.
I can be the sex kitten bombshell.
I can be the philosophy major, and the analytical bookworm.
I can be the tomorrow, and I can be the hell.
I can be the Victorian explorer, experiencing dark passions abroad.
I can be the deep bronze of a yearlong southern California tan.
I can be the actor in any reality show.
I can be the fashion icon, the mangy mutt, and the sleek ride.
I can be the commerce, and I can be the sell.
I can be the pro BMX’er, who takes a spill.
I can be the gold medalist to any Olympic judge.
I can be the spoiled brat, spewing saliva and raging her fists.
I can be the gum beneath your shoe.
I can be the glue that holds us together.
I can be the yin to your yang.
I can be the sun radiating warmth and heat.
I can be the grass on a cool, autumn day.
I can be the wind whispering in your ear.
I can be the cold chill shaking its finger in your face.
I can be the tragic victim, I can be the abused child, and I can be the neglected dog.
I can be the promise you make to yourself.
I can be me on any given whim. I can be you without having to be told to.
I can be the everything, with all that I am.
I can be the nothing, with all that I am not.
I can be the one giant beat, I can be the temporary now,
I can be the moment.
I can be the kiss. I can be the “yes” falling from your lips.
I can be
the perfect reflection.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

This Time Around

This time around I am actively moving through the pain. There will be no more running from it, - no more driving myself literally in circles or consuming mass amounts of media, and no more rolling it up and trying to smoke it, or peering into a bottle for it. There will be no more scampering to the ears of others with a melodramatic soap opera dripping from my tongue, and no more pointing fingers in an outwardly direction. This time around, I am allowing myself the space and the time just to feel. To sit in the seemingly cavernous space that this deep weeping wound exists within, and to observe its size and proportion within the depth of my gut. This time around, I am becoming well acquainted with my sadness.
Together, we go on ambling walks around a small neighborhood of San Diego, California. Together, we take long bike rides around the town of Clairemont, as I discover new pathways and darkened alleys. Together, we hop along a windy Pacific shore where an ocean churns and my mind focuses on the sounds of seaweed popping underfoot. Together, we spend time processing through these insights and reflections with the friends whom I have spent the past few years recoiling from. Together, we take to a wooden dance floor and we tap, we shake, we fling, we caress, we stomp, we sway, we shiver, we triumph, we lay down, we scoot, we stand up, we step precariously, we lunge, we jump, we toil, we flick, we flow, we cry, and we rejoice.
This time around, I openly mourn for the lost little girl who so desperately wants to be loved, yet is naively clueless about what love really is. For too long, I have focused my energy and attention in the wrong directions. Searching outside of myself, I mistakenly thought that a clean and organized living space would bring the peace of mind I was seeking. Rather, it became a focal point that could, in a mere matter of seconds, send my emotional state flying into a fit of resentment. (Just as it did to my mother all those years ago.) I have neglected my needs, choosing instead to focus on the comings and goings of a singular other, believing this would be enough to guide my boat onto safer harbor. I have shirked responsibilities, such as a due diligence towards my graduate studies, and I played the flake too many times to old friends, as well as to potential new ones. I came to reside in a perpetual state of tension and anxiety. The rage began to eat me alive, from the inside out.
Jumping further and further into the repetition of past behaviors, a noose around my neck continued to constrict. The anger, the pain, and the sadness, were raging at an all time high. Even though I knew that I was not being who I am or who I am truly meant to be, I thought that loving this sole other would be my salvation. As a friend recently shared, “You were looking to be validated.” Rightfully said, as all I wanted was to really be seen, and to have this one other acknowledge my power. The graceful dancer, the boisterous singer, the passionate writer, the wanna-be painter, the hungry lover, the spoiled child, the wise woman, the loyal friend, and the insecure human, all were witnessed, yet he also observed the fists I had been shaking, and the saliva I had been spewing, while forcefully attempting to make him see me, to make him truly love me. How could he possibly love me when I so obviously do not love myself?
After the minutes, hours, days and years, spent in quiet solitude, during my early and mid 20s, I have a clear vision of what loving myself looks like, - it is painting with vivid watercolors while singing along to the soul soothing lyrics of artists, such as the Indigo Girls, Tori Amos, and Ani DiFranco. It looks like long, ambling strolls ‘over the river and through the woods,’ taken in the darkness of night when I can move around as though I am a black, neighborhood cat, - curious about all of the unspoken truths lived within each fabricated dwelling. It also looks like my senses savoring sweeping vistas of mountain chains stretched out before me as I sit upon a rock outcropping a mile high, breathing in the magic of pine scented breezes while Red-Tailed Hawks swoop and dive overhead.
However, I intuitively and emphatically understand that I am most alive, I am joy and ecstasy embodied, I am living, and breathing pure, unadulterated love when I dance, when I acutely and presently move my skin and bone, muscle and memory, nostalgia and fear, through the spacetime continuum. When I surrender to all of the longing, when I give myself up to the conflict and the confusion, when I lay down with the emptiness, when I let go. And that is it in a nutshell, - love is simply letting go.
Letting go of all of the pain of past transgressions. Letting go of my parents’ mistakes. Letting go of any shame and guilt. Letting go of the apathy, envy, jealousy, ego, pride, and hurt. Letting go of the sadness because I do not know what love is. Letting go of the fear that I will never know. Letting go of what happened yesterday. Letting go of what is to come tomorrow. Letting go for the sole purpose of being here, now. Letting go of taking everything both personally and seriously. Letting go of the tinkerings of thought that keep my body erect and tense and my spirit chained. Letting go to let go.
This time around, I simply say, “Thank you.” Thank you for helping me to begin evolving beyond my fear of men and intimacy. Thank you for being a model of positive thinking and opportunity seized. Thank you for sharing your time, and your being. Thank you for giving me a swift kick in the pants.
For, this time around, at 31, I recognize that it is high time I start truly focusing on my goddess given birth right, - I am a born mover and performer. I am a movement practitioner. I must then do all I can to constantly be moving, and attempting to share this unique gift with others. I must do all I can to love myself now, so that I can let go and dance.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

"An A-Ha Moment"

"And it's difficult for people to surrender to that depth of longing without trying to have a Band-Aid to fix it, something of the senses to cover over that horrible feeling of loneliness and despair. But it's inside of that longing that you'll find your true prayer."
---from Come Into the Light and Stay There, by Kalindi La Gourasana

Friday, November 23, 2007

A Gobble Gobble Haiku, or Three

time of thanks
gives meaning to black friday
consumerism cheapens democracy. --cc

Thanksgiving mall shopping
Products produced cheap in China
Technology-crazed teens.
by Louise

Flowing Movements Sync
Rhythm Stretches Old Bones Togetherness
With Equal Force.
by Julie

Friday, November 16, 2007

The Wake Up Call


“When darkness is at its darkest, that is the beginning of all light.” Lao-Tzu

“We fear the dark and death because the ego has demonized them and prevented us from exploring their depths. The ego always wants to swim in the shallow end of the pool. In truth, we need as much diving practice as we can get in this lifetime so we’re not afraid of the next. Death is just another dance, another dive.” Gabrielle Roth

It comes in many forms, - the dreaded call in the middle of the night from a nearby hospital where your just yesterday healthy and vibrant cousin has passed away from a brain aneurism; the sobering effect of realizing that the promiscuous behavior you had been wantonly participating in has produced not the liberation you were seeking but, rather, the confinement of a life long, re-occurring disease; the teetering on the brink of bankruptcy due to the high end clothes, car, and home, that take up space in your immediate surroundings while detracting zeros from your monthly income and years from your life; the philanthropic visit to a refugee camp in the Sudan where people, just like you, are missing legs, arms, and other body parts, due to an unchecked human ego. Or, perhaps, it comes in more opaque ways: the uncomfortable proximity of a thirty-fifth birthday; the regrettable loss of a relationship; an irresponsible regard for citizenship; or even say, the expiration of a passport.
However received, a wake up call has emerged from deep inside the bottomless pit of my gut, from the liquid hollows of the earth’s core, and from the vast, dark space of the cosmos, to shake me out of the stupor I have spent the past five plus years moving around within. As Gabrielle Roth so eloquently writes in her book, Connections: The Five Threads of Intuitive Wisdom,
“Burdened by our ego, our shadow partner, we move like tired old toads on a salt-parched desert. It weighs us down. Our ego prevents us from surrendering to the flow of chaos, from trusting our intuition and using it imaginatively. It wants us numb and anesthetized. Basically, the ego is a necrophiliac.”

Subconsciously, I have been courting my ego for years now. Casually referring to a blatant cliché “We recreate that which we know,” I recently openly wondered about how many of my peers, who married young unlike me, will be divorced by the time I get around to marriage. After making this statement, the old friend I was chatting with minutely retracted his strong body. His simple, easy-to-miss action got me thinking about my words, and myself. I started wondering, “Am I simply referring to myself? Am I a byproduct of my own environment and upbringing?”
There is a lot to be said about the home from which I come, and the two primary caregivers that are my father and my mother. Like everything in life, the human emotions and traits within our household ran the gamut. From one opposite extreme of the continuum, joy, to the other, pain, and all of the anger, sadness, elation, fear, antipathy, anxiety, and homogeneity in between, our household was not short in the feeling department. It was not all bad, but it surely wasn’t all good, either.
As for my parents, though they have their shortcomings, they also have their individual strengths and character. I am honored to carry on their traditions, such as my father’s enjoyment for the small things in life, like finding golf balls out on the course, and his penchant for reading good books while curled up in his brown, leather Ottoman chair, and for my mother’s passion for her work, she has been a diligent and caring registered nurse for forty years now, and for the stories that she weaves from both fact and fiction.
They are two good people. They just aren’t two good people together.
What creates these conditions in which we find ourselves constantly complaining about and criticizing another while the other stupefies their self within the deep resonance of a beer bottle, the hazy plume of smoke, or the deafening call of an empty plate? How do we fall into this behavior, and why do we remain caught within its firm, life-demolishing grasp?
For years, I ran from intimacy. I cowered in the shadows of casual sex and unrequited crushes. I was deeply afraid of the storm that I knew was brewing, and laying in wait just underneath my demure composure. Free from the confinement of my parent’s home and from the small town that I had grown up within, I was emboldened to try on different identities. Like hats, I would haphazardly trade one in for the other, on the slightest of whims and without the faintest regard for what anyone else thought. Shaved head? Check. Exploring sexuality? Check. Not wearing deodorant? Check. Pissing on city street corners? Check. Defecating in public? Check. I was adventurous and raw, willing to discover life underneath every nook and cranny of existence.
As independent and righteous as I felt, I also understood that there were still hidden layers within my own being that I had yet to peel back. I knew then that the only to way to access these subcutaneous undercurrents was to dive in, backwards and upside down just as I always have done, into this thing called love. I just hadn’t quite come to understand that my subliminal understanding of love was based on my most primary of experiences.
Love between a man and a woman was not gentle, kind, or even remotely sensual. The woman bitched and complained, focusing solely on the negative, such as the household duties that were not taken care of. She roiled at the smallest of infractions, from spilled milk to a smart attitude, and she lashed out in physical and emotional abuse, expletives of “you lazy bitch” could be heard from down the hall. And the man just plodded along, working forty years at a job he was not necessarily passionate about but it allowed him frequent travels, conventions, and nights spent drowning his sorrow in alcohol. He held it all in, and let very little out. He was short on words, and his lack of communication was the distance the size of a football field between he and his three children.
To this day, my parent’s relationship still primarily entails her yelling at him, - verbally informing him of why he isn’t good enough and why he doesn’t have any friends. As for him, his drinking has hit an all-time rock bottom. Upon numerous instances now, he has fallen while drunk, hit his head, and caused it to bleed. This last time, after having driven himself home, he managed to pull himself up the staircase and into their bedroom where he shit and bled all over their matrimony bed. They still hardly touch, except on the rare occasion when something drastic has happened, such as a trip to the hospital, and a hug is called upon as the order of the day.
Don’t you ever wonder where I, this small, relatively young being, can put all of this heaviness? What do I do with it? Where do I stick the misery? How do I not carry this baggage around in this world and take it on as my own? Well, part of that wake up call is that I have been doing exactly this, - taking this horrible tragedy that can be this life and emulating it within my own meager terrain. I have simply been repeating the pattern.
I have consciously chosen, for over two years now, to be in a relationship with someone who has a very severe addiction. And, for almost as long, I have whined and moaned about him and his actions. I have been choosing to focus on the negative. Only days ago, I showed a really ugly side of myself that I had not seen in years. Frustrated over his lack of motivation, and the “laziness” that I felt I was picking up the slack for, I found myself ranting in a trance while verbally abusing him. I stopped dead in my tracks. “Holy fuck!” Right in that very moment, I knew that I was channeling memories of my mother and that I was subconsciously recreating life between woman and man as I had previously seen it, up close and personal. This is my understanding of what love is and what it looks like. How fucked up is that?
As for my partner, you may be wondering what love looks like to him. As far as I can tell, for he does not really divulge his innermost thoughts and his heartfelt feelings, he was abandoned by his biological mother, and then physically and emotionally abused by his stepmother. His first partner, like mine, was emotionally abusive and down right bitchy. Unfortunately, during our first year spent together, I allowed him to walk all over me. I didn’t stand up for myself, - I played the doormat just as my father has spent a lifetime doing. Eventually, it dawned on me that I was repeating a pattern. I knew then that I had to start taking a stand for myself by shoving all of his crap right back on to him. Only now, the pendulum has swung in the extreme, opposite direction. In a way, he has forced my back against a wall and he has pushed me into a corner. He, too, is subconsciously creating love in the only way that he knows it.
Last night, after somewhat talking and somewhat arguing, an anguished sob shook my lithe frame. In all honesty, images of me, alone and careening down mountain slopes on a snowboard, turned on that flowing faucet. It isn’t that I am afraid to be alone. For I have spent years in solitude, and I know that I am quite good at it.
Rather, it was the thought that these issues are mine and that, until I have created a new vision of what love is, what it looks like, and how it acts, nothing will change. Until I start celebrating all of the amazing little miracles of the here and now, such as: the way he grabs me and swings me around, both on a dance floor and in the privacy of our own kitchen; the way I can truly be who I am, - in all of the glory of torn, fading shorts that are a few sizes too big and the wretched stench of my noxious gas; to the way we share movement as a medium, and intuition as a guiding force, then no matter who the partner is, I will still be choosing to writhe in the stench of my ego.
As for him, he obviously has his own issues to deal with. Hopefully, someday, he will stop hiding behind his addiction and start looking at his own darkness and grief. The best I can do now is to support him in his own process of becoming. The best I can do now is to try to love and accept him. To give him attention and affection, and to hold his inner child who was never gently rocked and told, “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.” The way I see it is it is a little like his literacy. He has a fear of anything school related, he hates reading, and he is a horrible speller. My ”education” intimidated him. Although I initially allowed that to hinder my own actions, I would plant a small seed, here and there, while supporting him and simultaneously wishing that he would come to see the value in the written word. That day has come, and he now credits me with having taught him how to read, for he says, “You simply modeled the behavior.”
Perhaps, that is where and how I can begin again. I still don’t know what love looks like, how it talks, or how it moves, but I surely know what it doesn’t look like. And, for the most part, it doesn’t look like much of what I have written above. I do not know what is going to happen between he and I, for I do not know what the future holds. I just know that, for now, we are trying to move into forgiveness and, some kind of, understanding.
As Alice Walker put it in her The Temple of My Familiar,
“Keep in mind always the present you are constructing, for it should be the future you want.”
For five years now, if not longer, I have held on to fixed notions of who the person is that grew up at 3586 Ridge Road, just north of my current dwellings here in San Diego, California. I have been hooked on a fixed outcome, by subconsciously recreating my parent’s story, I have fated myself to that which I know yet do not want. I have clung to fixed identities, - among many are the traveler, the countercultural college student, and the beautiful girl, and I have desperately cradled memories created with old friends, rarely making space for new acquaintances and comrades. I have even clung to fixed fantasies of earning a graduate degree, creating a non-profit, finding a life partner, and being stable by the time I am thirty-five.
That wake up call, has me throwing my arms up in the air, and saying, “Alright. I surrender. I do not know where I am going, or how I am going to get there. But, finally, I am going to stop fighting. Finally, I am going to take off the mask and step out of the shadows. Finally, I am ready to lay the girl to rest, and let the woman take over.”
For, really folks, that is what this is all about, more than anything else - the painful process of growing up. I could turn away in embarrassment and say, “Yeah, I’m a thirty-one year old child.” Or, I could commend myself for not being married or having children, and thus not exposing innocent others to my instability. I could cheer myself on and, with a pat on the back, recognize that maybe after all, I am on that path. Maybe, I am headed in the direction that I ultimately envision. Maybe, now that I know that I am lost, well perhaps I am found after all.
My dance with death is not coming to a close. Really, it is just beginning. Instead of grabbing hold tightly to past experiences and to future daydreams and “becoming something rigid in a universe that is moving” (Roth, p. 88), I can instead try to let go of everything that I think I am and that I think I am supposed to be or do. I can finally embrace chaos. I can fall backwards with my arms spread wide and a grin on my face. I can move past my fears, and take to the stage again. I can take new risks, like following up on a business opportunity and rediscovering my love for film as a medium for celebrating dance, life, and community. Sure, I am still afraid, for I do not know how I am going to land, on what path, or where, but I am again going to start trusting my intuition. I am again going to allow it to lead, while the little girl goes down for a long nap, and the woman in the driver’s seat kicks her feet up and coasts in cruise control.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

The Trappings of Ego


spirit empty
body heavy
unhappiness weights a soul.

bereft of any desire for change
tortured from the inside out
stuck in a desolate wilderness
a pear-like shape crashes to earth
it plunders in impatience and fear.

touching upon this before
timidly, fingers have traced an outline
wearily, a mind has detected a nuance
a small fragment of something grander.

gracefully, i dance around the issue
running from it, i have hidden in the shadows
of looming institutions, and places to be
of pedestrian choked sidewalks and stale airport terminals.
i have masked it, in the everyday
of my mother’s love and the attention of others
of 9-5 school, work, family, celebrations, and death
i have pretended that the light is on
i have been faking it all along.

what is this
this great freedom of being
that with it comes chains
cold, steel links of slavery,
shiny, rose tinted illusory worlds,
and a confinement of thought?
what is this,
this deep, weeping wound that bleeds
out of every crevice, nook and cranny?

i have rolled it up and tried to smoke it
i have peered into a bottle and tried to drink it
i have kissed it wholeheartedly and made love to it on a bed of nails
i have eaten it until my stomach felt close to bursting
i have drank its wine and pissed its stench
i have read about it, talked about it,
sat in parishes and prayed about it
i have gotten down on my knees for it
i have even jumped out of an airplane for it
still, it persists and it pervades

this existence


it is numbless

it is unknowingness

it is the division of a whole
in the depth of the gut
it exceeds all definition
all words on paper
all emotion
all expressed feeling
what is this?

what is this when even in the midst
of all of the rehearsals, plays, and performances
in the midst of the finals time, and the first days of classes
in the midst of travels to foreign destinations and exotic locales
even in the midst of new friends and flirtatious romances
a nameless void festers?
i would prefer some temporary sort of contentment
in exchange for this gnawing, aching, endless nothing

it is the why and how obesity is reached
baggage to be pulled along in this life
it is the accumulation of material goods
the ball and chain of civilized life
it is the busy-ness of soccer practice, piano recitals, and part-time jobs
it is the cutthroat world of advertising and sales,
it is the eat shit and die, fake ass smiles of politicians and bureaucrats
it is the harbingers of new sciences
it rings in medical breakthroughs and it smashes through the glass ceiling
it originates in this immensity.

pleasure found
in watching babies grow
in seeing dogs bound from sea to shore after a beloved stick
reminds, but fades away
for i always return here, to this state, to this great country
of lack and servitude.

a lighthouse on a distant shore
i cannot locate
and although i know that i can best access that revolving beam
when i am fully present in the moment
when my skeleton is moving through this spacetime warp
i still somehow refrain
from dancing
i still somehow
forget to sing
to free my breath and allow it the chance
to dance with angels
to frolic with demons
to be pure energy
and to be free of the trappings
of ego.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

An Anatomy of Shorts


Navy blue and nylon, they are sewn together along the inner recesses of invisible thighs. At the apex, at the center of the crotch, fine threading has twice before been sewn. Begging yet another go at it with a needle, a dime-sized hole slowly pulls the fabric apart. The tenuous opening casually flirts as fingers gingerly probe the six-year old piece of clothing. Young hands gracefully glide over fading material while a mind conjures up images of past travels and nostalgic tribulations.
A bottom hem falls just above vertically challenged knees. An elastic waistband is stretched beyond recognition, retaining the contour of a voluptuous shape once worn like a scarlet letter. These days a plastic, blue button, with the emblem of two women sitting back to back, and a Velcro fly, struggle to keep the shorts up. A white and black label at the back reads “XL.” Random stains, a yellow dot on the rear, left thigh, pay tribute to the life of a struggling artist. Stitching is coming loose along numerous lines. On the right butt cheek, the cloth was once torn and then stitched back together using royal blue thread. What remains is an L-shape, which is also pulling apart at the seams.
Washed into the layers of silky fabric, the sweat of a time now past. Ground into the highly resistant textile, the dirt and soil from spills taken and adventures pursued. Today, even after having purchased the infamous pair of shorts from a department store in a suburban neighborhood of Lake Geneva, six summers ago, I don the gym-like garb and I wear it with a mix of pride and melancholy.
A bumbling twenty-four year old, I worked as a camp counselor for an American company based out of Switzerland. The first six weeks of my sojourn had been spent on an amazing landscape. Living in a tent and sleeping on a cot, I was privy to the southern, rolling hills of France’s wine region. I spent weeks underneath a canopy of limestone caves while learning how to perfect the j-stroke as I attempted to guide Canadian canoes down the river Ardèche.
Meals were spent out of doors. Media and mirrors were few and far between. On nights off, I would drink red wine by the glass full, oft times alone and sitting beside an ambling river. From the get-go, I did not know how to canoe even though it was my job to lead children on such an excursion. My peers, like-minded college aged folk with a penchant for both travel and experiential education, all but rejected me. I was certainly tolerated, just not accepted. The feeling made for an uncomfortable first few weeks yet somehow, as painful as this was to my ego, I was galvanized and invigorated. While the others were entranced by videos and television during their meager time off, I was out of doors, teaching myself to juggle, picking up the guitar again, or riding a bike up undulating, narrow roads and over to the singular nudist colony on the river’s banks.
I found solace in strolling along country roads and over to neighboring village castle ruins. Once, while returning home from such a journey, night had fallen and a strange grunting sound began emanating from the dense bush to my right. Initially humored by what I mistakenly thought were humans, I employed a singing voice after my laughter had dissipated and fear was quick to replace it. Pleading with whatever large creature was foraging nearby, I sang that I was just a harmless human out for an evening stroll. The tune soothed my panic and I high-tailed it over to a play structure where I found refuge up off of the ground. With my composure regained, I quickly walked back the few remaining steps to camp.
Weeks later, while in the office of a photographer who captured our descents down a specific rapid along our canoeing route, I gazed at framed photographs that lined a wall. In a few of them, large, waist high, feral pigs were fording the river. Finally, I had discovered the source of my earlier cause for concern.
As summer approached the riverbed began to recede, and along with it the judgment of my peers was also giving way. I had proven myself. While the majority of the male staff would help beach the canoes and carry all of the gear up the hill, only then to prepare their own campsite for the night and rest for a period of time, I along with a few other women, continued to prepare the campsite and meals, and then play with and keep the children occupied until night had fallen, stars were overhead, and we all fell into an exhaustive heap on our sleeping bags. Not to mention, my paddling skills had improved 100%. I was, at last, accepted.
With my acceptance, came less alone time. I joined the crowd, in drinking red wine by the river, in rock diving, and in skinny-dipping. One day, I even borrowed the camp cook’s moped and attempted to ride it over to Vallon-Pont d’ Arc, the nearest commercial village. Desiring to show off after first sitting upon the vehicle, I accidentally rode into a wooden beam adjacent to the camp’s recreation room. I then cruised the two-wheeler over to town. On my way back, I somehow, again, pressed on the accelerator, instead of the brake, causing the bike to rear up, and my rear end to fall off of the seat. Humorously, I tore a hole in the back of the orange pair of name brand board shorts that I had recently purchased. With borrowed thread, I had to sew up the mistake prior to the next week’s canoe trip.
At the spring season’s conclusion, I spent the following week traversing the Heidi-like mountainsides of Andorra, a principality that lies between France and Spain. Supple, rolling hills; rushing white water streams; wildflowers of every shape and hue; wild horses grazing in verdant meadows; slanting, scree slopes; towering granite peaks, - the Pyrenees has it all. Like a Billy goat, I leaped and jumped from one stone hut to another. (A series of 25 huts, or stone refugis as they are called, dot the Andorran countryside. These shelters are free of charge and well tended to.) For days on end, I swam in chilly, fresh water streams and I sunbathed on snow-patched mountaintops, attempting to make snow angels in the evaporating, white matter.
Again traveling alone, I was greeted by numerous other trekkers including hunters, hikers, and even a few rogue revelers. I had arrived into Andorra late on an inauspicious evening, not knowing a soul, and bedded down behind a sandy rock formation in the back of what appeared to be an empty ski chalet. My trip had included the stashing away of cumbersome clothes, on the hillside and in a hut, and the escapade of making friends with four Belgian men who had backpacked in cans of red bull and a bottle of vodka, marijuana in numerous forms, and mushrooms and ecstasy. During my last night there, I had a gentle make-out session with a Catalonian boy who could not have been more than twenty. I awoke only a few short hours later to ask him the time (which was a difficult task, for he spoke little English and I did not speak Catalan whatsoever). After realizing that it was 5:30am, I jumped up with anxiety. I had a mere hour and a half to run down the mountain and make the bus that would carry me back to France and, eventually, on to Switzerland.
With only minutes to spare, I bounded down and onto the main thoroughfare just a few short blocks away from the bus stop. After boarding, I fell into a seat with relief and quickly dozed off. Seemingly only minutes later, I was awoken with a start. A French policeman was shaking me awake, inquiring as to whether or not he could check my purse, which I had haphazardly tossed into the seat to my right. Immediately, I knew that an action from the night before, of moving a small metal pipe and a remaining tiny nugget of hash that I had on my person, stashed in a front pocket of a Mt. Hardware fleece jacket, and into the dainty bag I wore around my shoulders, was a mistake. “Pipa,” the man cried out. “Le pipa,” he alerted his co-workers. I sank down further into my seat, as they ransacked my bag. I was escorted off of the bus, while the driver patiently turned the engine off, and into the back of a marked police van. A minor strip search was conducted. (I had to take my shoes and socks off, and they searched my larger backpack for more paraphernalia or illegal substances.)
With my passport noted, a fine paid (50 French francs, I believe it was), the pipe and hashish confiscated and, essentially, a slap of the hand, I was loaded back onto the bus to continue along my journey. I refused (and, still to this day, refuse) to be ashamed of my enjoyment for smoking marijuana. However, I was a little embarrassed for slowing down the other passengers’ and the bus driver’s morning commutes. Nonetheless, I had a new job, and another foreign destination, to get to. Thus, again, I and we were off.
The excursion was marked with continued mishaps and stories in the making but I eventually arrived to the Auberge, a small hotel, bar, and restaurant that would serve as “home” for the next month and a half, located in a suburban village town just due east of Lake Geneva (or Geneve, as the locals call it. Also, the lake there is, actually, called Lac Leman.) The newest set of employees, fresh off the boat from their teaching stints and other day jobs in primarily the States and Canada, were already gathered and mingling. They were excited by the journey that they were embarking upon. Meanwhile, I was physically exhausted from being smack dab in the middle of my own exploits. I retreated early, to the comforts of my own bed in a room that I shared with three others, to write and contemplate. This behavior remained consistent throughout our short time together.
The day-to-day of summer camp life quickly came to emulate a pattern that I had only been too eager to escape. Monday through Friday, at 8:30am, we were to be outside and ready to hop on a short bus for the quick ride to the Chataigneriaz (the school grounds where our summer camp was held). Usually, I skipped the bus ride and walked up the hill along fields of sunflowers and lines of grapevines. Over Monday morning breakfast, which was comprised of cereal, yogurt, or bread with jam and Nutella, talk usually centered around the weekend just had, - a quick trip to Italy; our group celebration of the Swiss independence day; or the time spent partying down in the streets of Geneve. By Wednesday, conversation had already lapsed into what the up and coming time off had in store. The monotony quickly wearied my being, and I was acutely and sensitively aware that my life had segued from living in close commune with the land to a life further removed from it.
I began to question myself and whether or not what I was doing was of meaning. As the sole gymnastics coach, I ran the ‘Gymnasie de Cara’ with a solid hand. Managing all of the hundred plus children as they moved around the apparatus, from the floor, to the beams, to the mini-tramp, I was simultaneously coaching my peers on how to spot while trying to learn a few French verbs. The depth of the experience was cemented when, one night, while languishing around the Auberge, I decided to take a bicycle that a co-worker had found (deposited along the side of the road, it had been headed for a landfill), for a dusk lit ride. I rode east along the curvaceous, lake road and towards the nearest large town, Nyon.
In Nyon, ancient Roman columns are crumbling on an overlooking hill. At night, these relics of a civilization past are lit like beacons, brightly displaying the opulence of western thought. I rode around, enchanted by the sights my eyes were consuming while my thoughts danced merrily in stony daydreams. I headed towards the commercial district, where cars were forbidden, and I continued to steer in the direction of a sign that read “Do Not Enter” for I was a bicyclist and a privileged American who had the right of way (no matter what). A woman’s deep gasp alerted me to my folly.
I went flying, head first, over my handlebars, while my womanly thighs slammed into the gearshifts. I had attempted to ride between two cement pillars, across which an eight-foot long, black chain link was suspended. My training, from a lifetime spent in gymnastics, dance and other movement classes, kicked in and I instinctively tucked my chin to my chest. I performed a dive roll, jumping up at the tail end of it with my hands in the air. “Ces’t bon,” I exclaimed. “C’est bon,” (“I am good”) I tried to assure the on-lookers whose jaws were agape as they stood staring at the stunt. I picked up the bicycle, hopped back on it, and rode back home while the adrenaline pumped its way through my body, and my heart beat out a loud, rhythmic “holy fuck.”
The following day, while recounting the tale with my comrades, I had deep, purple bruises in the middle of each thigh. Corporeal reminders that what I was actively teaching to the kids, day in and day out, was a skill that could one day save their very real human lives, - just as it had mine on that very memorable occasion.
In the time that has since passed, the navy blue, nylon shorts have continued to play an integral role in my life. As a graduate student, they accompanied me to my first residency at Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont. While rubbing elbows with artists of every craft and medium, I fled from the typically scheduled cabaret, an evening of live music, dance, and theatre, performed in a refurbished hundred plus year old barn, for a quick respite. Under a warm August sky, I climbed the metal roof of a greenhouse. While careening back down, the shorts caught on a metal bracket, thereby ripping and puncturing my behind. With my ass partially visible, I wandered back into the event and proceeded to get my groove on as our local hip-hop artist and beat boxer spun the records (or, er, pressed buttons on his computer’s keypad).
Weeks later, after having returned home to San Diego, I was again out in public in these same shorts. Still torn, and still refusing to wear underwear underneath, I gallivanted on a Pacific beach with a dear playmate who was quickly becoming more than just a friend. We tossed a Frisbee disc to and fro, I in the torn shorts while also wearing a tank top, without a bra, that read, “Put the Fun Between Your Legs” (it had an image of a bicycle drawn in between the wording). Meanwhile, he had taken off his jeans and was running around catching the disc and flinging it back at me in nothing more than boxer shorts (which, he initially realized, he had forgotten to button). Indeed, we were a sight for sore eyes.
When we tired, we began to play in the sand, - creating sculptures out of found materials and objects. Bent at the waist, I was not afraid to raise my head and offer a “Hello” to the lifeguards as they drove by in their jeep. We capped our lovely afternoon off together by enjoying a meal of sushi at a local restaurant. Still parading in the fading shorts, I moved around with a little bit more apprehension as I ambled in and out of a black, leather booth.
That was two years ago. Today, the shorts hang from a 31 year-old waist. They hardly stay up, yet I cannot bring myself to part with them. My partner, the same man from the story above whom I now live with, scoffs whenever he sees me in them. Still, as old and failing as they are, they represent more than just an item used to cover up shameful body parts. The thinning remnant is a hint at a body embodied, - it is a historical artifact of lived experience. Stories are woven into the very makeup of the precious fabric. Parting with them would be like turning the last page on the chapter of my twenties and I guess, well, I guess that I am not quite ready to do that yet.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

21st Century Human


i climb a mountain,
and meet a blind man, together
we sing refrains,
favored cat stevens tunes
while our bodies feast
on clear san diego skies
and our moonshadows dance
out and over
an azure pacific.

i miss the warm presence
of a certain bald monk
who would read to me
the centuries old prose
of rumi
while we laid under
arcturus
on dirt dusted driveways
in recently washed workclothes.

i dig in soil in my mama's dress,
my hands,
reverberate
on the land, together
our pulse becomes
one. slowly,
a yard that is not my own
becomes.

i dive in backwards
and upside down
i wash with strawberries
and chocolate syrup
i hold conversations
in sound and words
in music and meaning
in dance and action.

i love a man whose tongue
is not my own
whose words can cut
like a seven-inch blade
and whose behavior can sting
like a good gin and tonic
i acknowledge that he is my/shadow
my counterbalance,
the darkness
i had been running from.

i crave connection
i seek humility
i desire nothing
more
than to reach out
and touch.

i feel desperately
alone
confined
trapped within
skin and bone
muscle and memory
nostalgia and fear.

still, it is the adventure
that keeps me
moving forward
walking new paths
pursuing electric connections
exploring fruitful ideas
and excavating
deep seeded emotions.

9-5
monday-friday
24/7
365
65 years of this
then what?

death
is written in these numbers
and figures which figure
nothing
into my well being
into my depth
of spirit.

success is living
life as adventure
journies taken
relationships pursued
and the pageantry of drama
spelled out explicitly.

life as adventure
is more than just a tenet
it is more than just some ten cent philosophy
that one can pick up
down at the local barber shop.

life as adventure
is not found in the hum drum
of the unconscious
it is not discovered
at the bottom of a beer bottle
in a broken down old bar stool.
life as adventure
is lived
in the rawness of your humanity.

i have stripped myself bare
right down to a bald noggin
with a disregard for panty wearing
and a preference to bleed
without a barrier without
some stupid piece of cotton
stopping me up like a dike.
i have laid down
on some god's marital bed
without a band
and with the only wish to steal
a mere pittance
from the riff raff's jean pockets
in the morning.

i have been caught
transporting hashish
across a foreign border.
i have spent upwards of 36 hours
in an american jail
listening to the tale
of a woman who smuggled crystal meth
via her vagina.

i have bedded down in the shadows between
a boardwalk and a beach
in the darkened corners
of a city at night
and behind sandy rocks
on an elementary school's property.

i have made friends with street urchins,
beautiful, young men who would sell
even their own bodies
just to earn a few disappearing dollars
together, we would throw a beloved toy,
a frisbee disc, around the gardens of a harare park.

i have come to understand
that there are not any actions
that are either above
or below
for my uncle's fate
of calling the streets of los angeles home
for the past twenty years
could just as easily be my own.
i have learned that there is nothing
that separates heaven and hell
from earth.

for i am mammal, flesh and blood
cut from the very same cloth
as my other earthly neighbors
i am homo sapiens
descendant of homo-habilus
wielding tools of milenia past and creating
nothing new under the sun
for i am the son, i am atom,
child of that revolving star
of brilliance and great magnitude
found at the center of our solar system
and i am the father, my seed will beget
more suns, to continue along this great march
of time, for i am also spirit.

i am 21st century human
i live in the future
i have lived before
and i am of the living now.


"and if i ever lose my land,
lose my plow and lose my hand
said if i ever lose my land,
oh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh
i won't have to work no more.
and if i ever lose my legs,
oh i won't moan and i won't beg
said if i ever lose my legs
oh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh
i won't have to walk no more.
and if i ever lose my eyes,
if the colors all run dry,
said if i ever lose my eyes
oh eh eh eh eh eh eh eh
i won't have to cry no more." --cat stevens