The Distance to Success

Quiet tiptoes
in the space
confidence
should fill.

Disoriented,
my ambition
hesitates
at unfamiliar crossroads
indistinguishable
from the decision points
that got me here.

Xeno’s paradox
in reverse
means every step
marries me
to a destiny
I do not choose
and can never recognize,
since there is no “there”
to which to arrive.

In another time
faith would frame
the space
where confidence
dwells.

Hard-won knowledge
would scaffold my belief,
and the success of surviving each day
would catapult me
headlong into the next.

Instead
I lean into
the solidity
of sunshine,
pace forward
with the dread
of anticipated regret
for all that I am not doing
to get to where I don’t know
I want to be.

Authenticity

What does it mean to feel authentic these days?

In a society where you have to have a license to drive, a degree to do pretty much anything, but no qualification whatsoever to be a parent, why is it that so many women still feel they're faking it?

Even when I'm good at what I do at work, I'm half waiting for someone to question my right to be there. "You don't really know how to do this," they'll accuse. And they'll be right. I don't. And somehow if I were a guy or a different kind of a girl, that would be okay. Or more okay than it is with me.

I have a running debate with many of my grad. school friends about who's more qualified for employment - them or me. It seems the grass is always more qualified on the other side of the fence!

I have a fantasy about being hired just because I'm smart, competent, and hard-working. I can't be hired for any other reason, because I swear to you I don't know anything about anything!

I started my college career wanting to know everything about everything. Somehow along the way, I learned only about context, not content. A postmodern dilemma, perhaps. Postmodern education to blame, probably. A postmodern lack of capacity for retaining information. My generation likes the shape of knowledge, not its heft. We understand the landscape of a theory - its genesis, the range of its applicability, its broad outlines. This mapped, we turn from it to the next big idea that we can sketch out and abandon.

And so my generation knows software - what technology can do, not what it should do. We acquire religious understanding voraciously but believe very little. We are full of empty boundaries.

Hermes was the messenger god in the Greek pantheon. He was also the god of crossroads, of borders, of humor (because what is humor but the intersection of 2 incongruous ideas?). He was a trickster, hard if not impossible to pin down. Hermes could get you out of a scrape with his ingenuity, the wings on his feet, yet few would pray to such an immutable, insubstantial, whimsical god. In this way, my generation is the Hermes generation. We map, we trade, we barter. We exist on the edges, eschew the possibility of center.

Maybe this bodes well for a war-free world in the future. Who would lose their life for an idea only loosely held, loosely sketched, easily abandoned? Who would find offense in someone else casting off such an idea when another seems to work better in their own circumstance?

Generational studies tell us that the new generation, the so-called millenials, are not paralyzed by prejudice in the way past generations have been. They have always lived in a world where diversity is celebrated, if not always achieved, where tolerance is demanded if not always granted. In some ways, this might make them more dangerous, more prone to repeating the atrocities of a history they don't seem connected to or inspired to learn.

And for me, it means angst about a career path shrouded in fog. Who will pay for my gifts? Is it enough to offer the skill of context, outlines, meaning without belief, without knowledge, without expertise?

The Space Inside*

“Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day” 

Pay attention (work hard), 

rest all that is not needed for the work, 

relax into the effort, 

feel how this pulse eases into hum, 

contributes to all others’ to make our lives more rich 

make us more joyful 

more alive to our gratitude 

more able to feel the ease from our troubles 

wash over us, 

leaving them sparkling, crystalline 

with salt. 

Invite them in, 

all those you think you cannot feed, 

who will fill themselves 

with exactly what you can give 

what they can receive 

from the basket of your compassion – 

your strengths, 

the limber moments 

between your daily plans – 

who will spice each bite 

with all you have learned 

to let go. 

Set the even table of your prayer for justice 

with the spirit you bring 

when flinging your loving arms 

to all you can reach, 

all you can harvest 

in this season that feeds us 

and the guests who bring us so much more 

than we can return. 

I will open the dark doors 

of my small home, 

feel the rooms grow 

as a vessel swells 

each time the water 

fills 

then hollows 

the space inside. 

*Interesting that I had forgotten a poem from 2005 called "The Space Between Us" Chapbook, anyone?

** I believe this poem was responding, in part, to the poems "To be of use" by Marge Piercy and "Love after Love" by Derek Wolcott.

Release

In yoga we learn that our thoughts and feelings line our joints like hard water deposits. I never give this much thought, partly because I'm so inflexible that I never get to that layer and partly because I'm too busy trying to match my perfectionist tendency to my woefully imperfect poses ("practice" be damned).

But late in May I committed myself to going to a hot yoga flow class every weekday through July, which I've done with few exceptions. There have definitely been changes -- things I can feel, effects I can see, progress in good directions on many fronts. In the past week, I noticed an opening in my hips that has certainly never existed before and almost immediately heard a concomitant litany of past voices -- my voices -- saying all the things I say to myself when things are hard for me: This is impossible. How can anyone be expected to do this? I can't stand it for another minute. It's so hard I have to stop, etc.

The memory associated most strongly with these messages was a summer swim team, my first swim team, without ever having learned "real swimming" beyond 2-week YMCA classes when I was little. A seemingly irrelevant yet probably vital detail: my oldest sister was one of the coaches. We swam lap after lap, and as I struggled to breathe, I struggled harder against the growing panic in my lungs that this just wasn't FAIR. I couldn't do it, so by logical extension no one could do it: it just couldn't be done and therefore asking it of me (and us, I rationalized desperately) was fascist. Did I mention I'm a perfectionist? Yes, the ugly side of perfectionism is the utter inability to deal with not being good at something, even when it's YOGA for god's sake, as though being good at yoga is anything more than practicing it intentionally!

I know this, yet the voices are so distracting this week that I cannot calm myself, cannot focus, cannot stay in that hot, unbearable room. Today, cooling myself like a nuclear rod in the shower, I realized this simple truth: I do not know how to be gentle with my ... what? failure? It's not that. Imperfection? It's not quite that either. With my own inner fascist demanding that only perfection equals even "practice." Trying means giving 100%. Not trying means skipping the pose, leaving the room, checking out. There's some subtlety here that I can't quite finger. Throughout the class, I modify the poses to be less difficult, but then I give 100% within the modification. What I can't do is approach a pose half-heartedly knowing I can do better and (gasp!) choosing not to.

This seems like a life skill that I should know by now. Yet the fact that I don't clues me into why I'm so baffled -- and resentful -- at the majority of folks who seem to be floating through life entirely unfazed at their lack of exertion and unapologetic about ignoring expectations and responsibilities that affect those around them. Who was your mama? I want to ask them. And maybe that's another clue that there's a voice other than mine distracting me in yoga.

So I need another way to think about effort - a valid middle ground between all or nothing. A new way to be gentle with myself and the chasm between my intention and the unforgiving hardness cementing my joints closed, tight, and unmoving.

These adjectives no longer serve me.

Weather or not to be

The rain,
staccato in me,
drums past any knowing
of the first drop.
Shifting puddles
cannot reflect their source.
Instead of a steady beat
lulling me into peace,
each drop swords
past capture,
slaps from my hand
what I grab –
the knowledge of self
life
spirit
I’m supposed to live in,
shoes off.

Shoes slushy,
I mush around,
confusion spilling
onto your bristling welcome mat
I hop on and off so quickly,
not wanting
you to ask what I don’t know
about what I left behind,
what sloshed out of unloyal shoes
when water realized I couldn’t hear
all it came to say.

Pre-resigned

Until the pebble settles on my last rib, I breathe around the empty space at my core. I am not yet resigned to what’s next. Without knowing the shape of my gifts, I cannot tie the ribbon or wrap the box filled with quiet resolve and generous layers of plenty. The swell will come, juicing my fingertips, levitating the hands that can hold all I love.

Existentialism vs. Job Hunting

Lately I've been thinking about how the existentialists got things right. I'm struck these days by the absurdity of our lives - the absolute craziness of our careening trajectories. Blink - you're five, feeling thirty. Blink again, you're in high school acting thirty. Blink blink, you're past thirty, still with no better idea of what you want to be or even who you want to be than when you were five. And does it matter? The minutes will pass, shooting quickly past days and months and years until a sunset stops you, stuns you, humbles you and your groping brain searching for personal meaning. Yes, we create it, but yes, it's also just ... not there. Not anywhere it can be discovered or stumbled upon or even worked toward.

I do think we're living through a new era, where adulthood is not coupled with a career, in the true sense of that word, complete with a goal and strategic shifts toward some step on a ladder you chose when you were in your twenties. Now we hop from job to job like so many lily pads, hoping for more shade or more flies or less wobble.

It is strange to feel you have gifts but no avenue to get paid to use them. It is disconcerting and unsettling and fundamentally questions your worth as an adult.

I can already sense how little sense my life is going to make in another thirty years. I could be wrong, of course. I might be heading to the culmination of all my disparate experiences that will resolve into crystal clarity how each contributed some vital skill toward some perfect, well-paying, secure job.

I just don't see it. Maybe I won't until it gets here.

Blessings

With much calmed, what I have to say is this: Thank the gods for Netflix Instant Viewing.

As my husband would say, I am not an early adopter (almost typed adapter - same difference). I resisted a cell phone, resisted Netflix, resisted watching movies on the computer, am still actively resisting Facebook (oh but the pictures! The connection with Snapfish and printing at Walgreens in Miami, where Eric's mom can finally keep up with her granddaughter's changing face...).

But after months of depression watching whatever the gods of mercy or torture put on late-night tv, I am now four seasons in to Law and Order: SUV. It is absorbing enough to take the edge off late-night feedings and early-morning pumpings. It's quality enough not to resent the minutes taken off my life watching it. It's gruesome enough that I remember to count my blessings instead of sheep.

There's the IT Crowd for family feedings and Word World for morning dressing time. There's movies and movies galore - so much that you never have to worry about running out of things to watch or re-watch.

And so, baby time is blissed-out media viewing time. Add a little reading during pumping before bed and suddenly, life's not so bad.

Now if only libraries delivered...

Hot, Calm Night

Realizing again how much the world is governed by entropy. Being a homeowner really keeps this foremost in one's thoughts. The carpet that was new upon moving in is ... dingy and spotted. The fans that were so cheery and industrial-cool last summer are dusty and in one case, broken. Baby swing? More of a baby statue memorializing fun. Toilet? Constantly moving from order to chaos. Clothes? One day from dirty.

I know I should be focusing on the joy in my life. All the blessings. A healthy, easy kid. A loving, kind, thoughtful husband. (But ... even though ... )

In the face of all that's right with my life, I'm starting to wonder if my tendency lately to dwell on dissatisfaction indicates a chemical imbalance from the roller coaster ride of pregnancy and nursing and a return to fertility, so mother nature tells me.

I've got an acupuncture appointment tomorrow, and I've been talking to the practitioner in my head for the last few days. He diagnoses that I have much imbalance, many little cancers of the mind, but, he says reassuringly, "We will fix."

So I try to do what I can to move toward health. Clean the kitchen. Clean the bathroom. Fill the water pitcher in the fridge. Sit outside with the Christmas lights on. Light a candle. Turn the fan to blow over my set jaw. Write.

As my boy Eliot whispers in my ear, "Anything is better than nothing." (But he still killed himself, my dissatisfied self complains.)

I spent half a day and some hours this weekend putting together a list of poems that other people list as their favorites (Love Amazon.com!) and saving them to my poetry file. I invited two of my poetry-loving friends to have an evening of poems. I will come well-stocked!

I wonder how much I'm not learning about myself by not keeping up better with the friends of my heart. Mordechai just jumped in my lap to remind me that I'm not learning from my pets, either. He's got a lot to teach me about going where others can take care of you, where you can love unconditionally, no matter how many times you get thrown across the room (yikes!) or ignored.

And so, time to pump, read a bit of Wonder Boys, maybe a B.H. Fairchild poem or two. And sleep for a few hours until it's time to wake and pump and watch bad late-night t.v.

Such do the blessings continue.

Mommy Moment

Let me start by acknowledging that I've always struggled separating "real" emotions from chemically-induced similacra of feelings. In the end, does it matter whether what you're feeling is a response to real stimula or just manufactured because of hormones? Maybe it matters in terms of how seriously to take it. How much to base decisions off it.

But even if it's "fake" emotion, doesn't it come from somewhere? Isn't it you, too? Just you hyped up on life's greatest little gift to women?

I've got this on my mind for two reasons.

1) I've got my first period after having a baby just 4 months ago in April. Some of my girlfriends are getting their first period after 2 years! I'm guessing the difference is that I'm back to work and therefore pumping instead of nursing during the day, which my body knows is not nearly as good as the real thing.

Because of #1, coupled with post-pregnancy hormones and breastfeeding hormones, I'm having intensified fears, anger, and feelings of helplessness around my job situation, which is not so viable right now. I'm not sure what to do about that or what I can do about that, hence the panic.

2) I had a dream two nights ago that I decided to cheat on my husband with this guy we know. We were at a party and flirting, and in the dream, I consciously chose to make plans to meet up with him later that night and do it in a bathroom somewhere in the house. (That's the language of the dream - very high school somehow...)

I stood in front of a mirror and went back and forth. Is this worth risking my marriage? I pictured Eric's face, tried to feel what it would be like to lose him, tried to rationalize the fact that I was going to make this horrible choice. I decided maybe I wouldn't sleep with this guy, but I would make out, and if things got out of hand, I'd deal with it then (and that meant I'd probably go all the way).

So there we were, lounging in the bathroom, not touching. It was awkward for both of us, and we knew the stakes were high. It would take a lot to get over the hump and actually start touching. But the air was electric, charged with what might be anticipation if we let it become that. We talked, laughed, and somehow got on the subject of puppy poop. We made joke after joke about stepping in poop on the lawn. And ... the dream was over, spell broken. My brain hadn't been able to go there.

But I woke up totally guilty. I had decided to cheat! I imagined it! I played the scenario out in my head in detail!

Do I tell? It means nothing. Was a dream. Is not real. But my feelings of guilt are real, and I was still soaked in the dream, like cigarette smoke on your clothes after an evening in the bar.

So I told. Apologized. Said I felt guilty. And do you know what my fabulous husband did? He wrapped me up in a big ole hug and said, "Oh, honey. I'm so sorry!" Sorry I had that dream and felt bad about it! What a guy! And so I felt close to him again and knew that I wouldn't make that choice in waking life. And knew that our relationship could weather my dream indiscretions.

But still, what does it mean that I went there in a dream?

And the job thing? I just don't know. It's one of those decision points - what do I want to be when I grow up? What am I capable of? What's realistically possible, given this economic climate?

I feel my best when I'm facilitating public involvement processes. Could I find enough work to make a living doing that?

I also like using the technologies of project management - budgets, spreadsheets, schedules. Is there a job that allows me to mix a little of this in, or would this just auger well for owning my own business?

I love putting together documents - desktop publishing, editing, technical writing, etc. Are there jobs where you get to do that? Jobs that I can still do bits of the above?

I love teaching. How does that fit into all this?

And if there is no perfect salaried job out there ... am I brave enough, smart enough, saavy enough, connected enough, and motivated enough to make a go of it? And is it a viable idea given the craziness out there? Given that I have a newborn and a husband whose job is similarly unstable?

Good lord. Is it any wonder I'm emotional?

Self-Portrait by David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.

I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.

Finding Stillness

I've been thinking lately about singing meditation, mostly because the only time I have to connect with my deeper side on a daily basis is as I sing to Umea -- while she's eating or close to sleep. I find that I'm not all that patient with nursing. After the first few minutes -- when she's cute, and smells so good, and if feels so good to hold her -- you have to just sit there, thinking of all the things you need to do and could do if you didn't just have to sit there, being the producer of milk and inducer of good baby/momma hormones and general inducements toward intimacy.

I've found some hymns that always seem to break into my unending stream of should-be-doings and take me to a more conscious place. One is almost postmodern in that its message and effect reflect each other.

Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness carry me.
Find the silence, hold the silence, let the silence carry me.

In the spirit, by the spirit, with the spirit giving power, I will find true harmony.

Seek the essence, hold the essence, let the essence carry me.
Let me flower, help me flower, watch me flower, carry me.

In the spirit, by the spirit, with the spirit giving power, I will find true harmony.

That one's just for me. Then there's another that Umea seems to like.

Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
Ours is no caravan of despair.
Come, yet again, come.

That makes a beautiful round, as does this one, which I also sing often to Umea:

And everyone 'neath a vine and fig tree,
Shall live in peace and unafraid.

And into ploughshares turns the sword;
Nations shall learn war no more.

Then there's this little ditty, oddly uptempo:

Soon the day will arrive when we will be together,
and no longer will we live in fear.
And the children will smile without wondering whether
on that day thunder clouds will appear.

Wait and see, wait and see,
what a world this will be,
when we care, when we share,
you and me.

Some have dreamed, some have died to make a bright tomorrow,
and our vision remains in our hearts.
Now the torch must be passed with new hope and new sorrow,
and a promise to make a new start.

Wait and see, wait and see,
what a world this will be,
when we care, when we share,
you and me.

How about this one? Sung to the classical Finlandia tune.

We would be one as now we join in singing
our hymn of love to pledge ourselves anew
to that high cause of greater understanding
of who we are, and what in us is true.

We would be one in lving for each other
to show to all a new community.

We would be one in building for tomorrow
a nobler world than we have known today.
We would be one in searching for that meaning
which binds our hearts and points us on our way.

As one, we pledge ourselves to greater service
with love and justice, strive to make us free.

I feel that if I could learn these well enough, I might carry more stillness with me into the stream of moments that have been carrying me ever faster through my days. I might be filled with more ... spirit, gravitas, calm, meaning.

I feel a slipping lately, a widening gap between where my days carry me and where I feel my strengths are, my source of power, my sense of myself.

I told a friend that I have this feeling about myself as though I'm expecting a friend to come in from out of town. I can't wait for all the great conversations we have, staying up late into the night, all the catching up we have to do. But she's not here yet, and I must gather my stories to make the most out of each moment she's here.

So I must sing. Gather my stories, and sing.

Umea Comes

Umea was born six weeks ago on April 3. We've made it this far, and I'm just starting to feel that we're getting used to each other. I didn't have that bolt of lighting love that some mothers feel. Instead, I felt wonderment that this thing that I've been wanting for so long -- a child, a daughter -- is finally here and a simultaneous effort not to try to turn this into anything I dreamed. I know she is her own person and that our relationship will take its own shape despite any dreams or intentions I might have. I wonder sometimes if I'm trying too hard to stay unattached to outcome. It may be interfering with my ability to enjoy these moments fully and to bond with her in a way that's unapologetic to what she might feel when she's a teenager.

I find myself thinking often that nothing is permanent, and while I enjoy her now, she may not always be here. I'm not sure where this macabre reasoning is coming from, but it does signal fears that I never would have expected of myself.

I actually had a dream the night before last that she was dead. It was right before Halloween, and some friends asked whether they could use her body for their haunted house, and I agreed, because, well, there was nothing to be done. It wasn't until her head was separated from her body that I collapsed into sobs on the kitchen counter, finally feeling the loss.

Part of it is feeling overwhelmed with the responsibility for caring for such a helpless creature, especially when I feel I know so little about what to do. There are so few options when she cries -- feed her, burp her, put her to bed. The relentless repetition of days tends to remove the portent of a brand new life and precipice of a new love.

Yet there are moments, of course, when it all comes crashing through all these defenses and excuses and life patterns. She's very much smiling these days. After naps, when she's lying propped up on my knees, she breaks into a crooked grin as we stare at each other. She's begun exercising control over her hands, and sometimes at the breast or when she's on my shoulder, she'll knead me or grab my hands. In these moments, it's as though she's breaking through to my dreams of what motherhood would feel like, what it would entail. This both frightens me -- what if it ends? -- and surprises me -- how did I know how this would feel? It's as though I'm becoming a mother in reverse.

It's perhaps as a wife that I'm learning the most. That part of life is much more surprising than motherhood, somehow, as though I didn't imagine it as fully as I imagined having children and therefore aren't as familiar with its rhythms and edges. Not that it's hard. In fact, it's much less dramatic and much richer than I ever dreamed. The chemical badness that always attracted me to my favorite boyfriends is replaced with an intense trust and appreciation. He follows through -- most of the time -- and when he doesn't, he either intends to or tries to on hearing its import to me or to us. I can trust that, which is so awe inspiring. I'm much better than I would have thought at phrasing requests plainly and positively. I hardly ever think about whether he knows me or not; that hardly seems the point, somehow. He loves me and has agreed to share a life. As long as I keep up my end of the bargain and keep tabs on myself, then he'll know me as well as I make the effort to teach him. As well as I make the effort to teach myself.

Everything else fades to background. For me, having a kid is like living in a land of Platonic forms. It's all the essential building blocks of life, evolutionarily speaking. Caring for an infant, securing a partner to support us, sleeping, eating, walking.

There are friends, too. They bring food and ooh and aah appropriately over our sweet girl. There is the tacit acknowledgment that I am now, suddenly and irrevocably, a woman, where before I was playacting at it. Now there's no question I'll be 50 and round and pudgy and worried about hosting visitors one day, as my mom does.

As for Umea herself, she's amazing. Utterly charming. Mecurial, with a twinkle in her eye from the first week. People commented on it. They tell me all the time she looks like she has stories to tell. She's got a great voice already -- low and pleasing. Even her noises are professional-sounding, as though she's a real performer already. She's got a temper, and she doesn't have much transition room between humor and anger. She can go from a smiling session with me to unconsolable crying in the space of a few breaths. But she's also in love with the world already, staring intently at everything for minute on minute. She's got achingly long fingers, long feet and long toes, a cute pug nose, rosy cheeks, high forhead, great, blue eyes that are so intense as to be disconcerting -- people tell me that, too. And lots of dark hair that always elicits a comment. We don't know where that came from, and yes, we think it will change.

I wish, somehow, that I could love her more, but it feels like I'm waiting for something. For her to grow up more, or to become conscious of herself and therefore able to differentiate herself from me, or for a promise that she's not going anywhere? I'm not sure. Maybe all these things. Maybe love and trust take time. I do notice that reuniting with her after we're separated for a while gets me closer to feelings of adoration than anything else. Maybe I just need perspective, a little distance to see the picture clearly and know -- this is love. This is our family. This is it.

Push and Pull

It's interesting to me how being pregnant has affected my relationships. I'm suddenly much closer to my stepmom, who's been the biggest cheerleader since she was the first one I called. Setting me up with free ultrasounds, asking around for cribs and other necessary items, and generally cooing and oohing and ahhing and not questioning every decision we make.

Other new moms have been similarly generous and wonderful -- telling me all the little things no one bothered to tell them, sending on lists of pediatricians and daycares, sharing their own worries and triumphs.

Friends who've been closest previously haven't really been there, most likely because I've never needed much from folks. Still...

And all the stereotypes I've ever had about church people and babies have come true -- from knitting to overwhelming generosity and special care. One woman offered me a winter poncho for when I get too big for my own coats. Another offered to dig out her pregnancy books -- from 20+ years ago! It does make me feel supported and blessed to not be facing this alone.

In general, I'm feeling really good these days. We know it's a girl -- Umea. Perhaps Umea Marie if I can get Eric to cave in. I'm getting big and unwieldy, slowing down, having a harder time sleeping. But generally in good spirits and good energy during the day, at least.

Life is sweet and about to get sweeter. And I have the the sweetest husband of all.

Any Night - Phillip Levine

Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine,
the yellowing ash, all the trees
are gone, and I was older than
all of them. I am older than the moon,
than the stars that fill my plate,
than the unseen planets that huddle
together here at the end of a year
no one wanted. A year more than a year,
in which the sparrows learned
to fly backwards into eternity.
Their brothers and sisters saw this
and refuse to build nests. Before
the week is over they will all
have gone, and the chorus of love
that filled my yard and spilled
into my kitchen each evening
will be gone. I will have to learn
to sing in the voices of pure joy
and pure pain. I will have to forget
my name, my childhood, the years
under the cold dominion of the clock
so that this voice, torn and cracked,
can reach the low hills that shielded
the orange trees once. I will stand
on the back porch as the cold
drifts in, and sing, not for joy,
not for love, not even to be heard.
I will sing so that the darkness
can take hold and whatever
is left, the fallen fruit, the last
leaf, the puzzled squirrel, the child
far from home, lost, will believe
this could be any night. That boy,
walking alone, thinking of nothing
or reciting his favorite names
to the moon and stars, let him
find the home he left this morning,
let him hear a prayer out
of the raging mouth of the wind.
Let him repeat that prayer,
the prayer that night follows day,
that life follows death, that in time
we find our lives. Don't let him see
all that has gone. Let him love
the darkness. Look, he's running
and singing too. He could be happy.

Clearing the Pile

I'm definitely seeking solace these days.

What is it about us that sends us seeking ourselves at every turn in our lives? Or is that special blessing of an instinct reserved for a certain segment of the population? And what would that be -- intelligent, curious, egotistical, self-absorbed, un-insightful, unbalanced, or is it, much more to my liking, a not unwelcome side effect of choosing to live an authentic life? A life examined. At least, from time to time.

I think about my childhood more than most people, I think. I had the same best friends from age 2 to 13. I had lots of childhood trauma, which helps things stick in your memory. I read books over and over and over, helping to imprint them and myself thinking of them in my mind.

My mother recently cleaned her garage and finally got us girls to take away all the stuff we'd been storing there, including boxes and boxes of books. Much to my delight, I did a great job as a kid knowing which books to save! I have so many of my favorites now, and I've been reading them voraciously in one or two sittings, night after night. They're exactly as I remember them, and there's such a warping feeling of rightness and strangeness between how I feel now reading them and the illusion of being different while reading them.

Is there continuity in consciousness? In experience? I have to say no. My memory is much more like packets of life [ha, meant to type light] operating as particles versus a wave. Maybe that's just a factor of what I use it for: occasional introspection to get me through the next transition.

Now there's the biggest one and probably second to the last one: dying. Parenthood is more than just about inviting a kid into your life. It's about the last chance to finalize your independent identity as opposed to your soon-to-be always-relational identity of you-as-mom, you-despite-being-mom.

I see Eric facing the same challenge but played out slightly differently. While this new life twist does have me wondering about my professional identity, it's not tied to my worth as a person in the same way as it seems to affect Eric as a man. He's thrust neck-deep in the question of: "Am I a good provider? Am I doing what I want to do in my professional life? Because I'm about to lose the flexibility to make changes easily very very soon."

As an aside, something I've learned about myself recently. I follow through. I used to think of this as being anal or having a high work ethic or being a perfectionist or something. Now, I'm thankful every time I find myself bending down to pick up a string on the carpet and throw it away, or unpack that box even though it contains a bunch of junk that I have no idea what to do with.

My mom came over to help me around the house for a couple hours -- bless her -- and I found her the same way, only more annoyingly so. She kept saying, let's just do a little more so that it feels good to have it done. And I knew just what she meant.

When I was little, I used to clean my room by piling up everything from on top of my dressers, everything out of place around the room, etc., into the middle of the room. Then I'd dust, make the bed, generally clean all the surfaces I could suddenly see. Then, one by one, I'd start to put things away from the pile. If I couldn't find a place for it, I'd throw it away. It was a painstaking process, and pretty slow. But it felt good from the beginning. Good to see cleared off surfaces. Good to have portions of the room done (if you could ignore the gigantic pile in the middle of the room). Good to restore order piece by piece as the pile shrunk.

I sometimes feel I take the same tack with the rest of my life, trying one by one to clear off my commitments, trying to make the other pieces of my life feel good and set and clean, even as I work to shrink my pile of should's and have to's.

I only have another 4.5 months to shrink my pile before it leaves my control more than ever before.

On Prayer - Czeslaw Milosz

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

No Time for Introspection

Suddenly find myself in an internal cycle once again. I should be able to recognize the signs by now, but ... life is too immediate to see sometimes.

Coming out of the most intense project at work - high pressure, fast deadlines, huge expectations, historical import. The whole shebang. It's laying in wait at the moment. Gathering comments. The onslaught will ensue next month, I'm sure.

In the midst, I discovered I've got new life growing inside me. No time to think about it, I mostly tried not to focus on how intensely uncomfortable pregnancy is!

I'm 4.5 months in now. Bought a house and moved. Still living out of boxes. Worrying about how to pay for new bills and a new mortgage. Wondering how other people do this, when we can barely do it, and I know we're better off than most. The financial collapse. The blazing political contest.

I have to admit it feels like a world in its last days. Biblical. Epic. Death throes of ideologies. All that.

And such internal silence! Amidst the sound and the fury, such thin worries! Such interim thoughts, bridging the gap between days with grocery lists. House needs. Future expenses.

What I do for myself personally these days is study "planning" to pass a certification test in November. Edifying...

It is a comment on where I am these days that my biggest joy is television shows: Pushing Daisies. Heroes. Others too embarrassing to mention.

Facing the most traumatic, life-changing times possible in life, I feel the rising panic to reestablish friendships and support networks. All after November. All in the future. All tomorrow when the pressing of today is not quite so insistent.

Several high school friends contacted me recently, which felt like a sign, but I haven't followed through. I'm not sure what I have to give, and having felt like I abandoned them before, I'm hesitant to promise what I won't or can't deliver.

But maybe all of it is crap. And life's moving so fast, there's no time to take anything back. You just have to try to do as much as you can right in the first place. Try to make the heroic efforts to fight the relentless succession of days. I wrote a graduation paragraph once that said Baudelaire was right: time is the enemy.

I am such a sad soldier. Doesn't really matter. There's always the marching.

Navajo Chant

I see the Earth
I am looking at Her and smile
Because she makes me happy.
The Earth, looking back at me
Is smiling, too.
May I walk happily
And lightly
Upon Her.

couple(t) - Chris Blakeley

three blocks later

they're still kissing