Day 17 of my 30/30

Dear Random Man dancing on the corner of Orcas and Beacon Ave S.,


Hallelujah! I thought I was the only one to hear the music. No one else tapped a toe, snapped a finger. They waz all spines vertical and hips horizontal, bearing stoic crosses on the trudge towards coffee. But me, I woke up to disco balls flashing glitter against the blacks of my eyelids, and they didn’t dissipate in the bright tangerine of dawn. The beat grew stronger, a robust and complicated rhythm jiggling through my thighs, fluffing up my hair. I felt maracas in my kidneys, tambourines in the slap of my heels, trumpets in my pancreas, trombones down the line of my shin bones. I woke up with violins in my liver, not that mopey longing stringing things, I mean mariachi staccato leaps. My toes were wiggling piano keys. Thank God you can hear it too! Feel the marimbas fluttering up through shoulders. Shake it. Pop and lock it. Shimmy like a Christmas jello mold. Let the vibe wail out like a joy siren. Are we the only two people who got the memo? We can’t be the only ones on earth to wake up to this miracle. Keep dancing Sir and I will too and maybe they’ll start to hear it. Maybe it’ll sneak up on them, their mouths curled up at the corners, getting all crinkly around the eyes, that tell tale sign that this beat is contagious.

Power of My Word Poems

These poems were written as a final project for a class called the Power of My Word. Power of My Word was the second to last pre-req before I can begin practioner studies through Amazing Grace, a church of Religious Science (not the same as scientology). I grew up in the Episcopal church, and it was an awesome place to grow up. I am not like my recovery Catholic friends. I don't wake up in a cold sweat freaking out about all the things I am doing to write my one way ticket to hell. But I did hit a point with the Episcopal church, where service didn't feel the same. I began to become numb. The words that held so much value to me as a kid lost some of their magic and all those question that I never really felt got answered...well they were still there for me.

Fast forward several years. I found myself at the Center for Spiritual Living. This was my first introduction to Religious Science and after that one service it took me 6 months before I was ready to go back. I like it. It was powerful, but it was also kind of overwhelming. So over the last few years I have been easing my way into the church and into a deeped understanding of the teachings of Ernest Holmes. One thing I love, is that I am encouraged to question, to find my own answers, to wrestle with what I believe. These poems are expressions of what thoughts I've been working through lately.

When I told my mother I was going to be a practitioner

When I told my mother I was going to be a practitioner
she said of what?
and I answered Religious Science
and there was a silence
that filled the spaces between us like a canyon,
a breath that rattled days, whole seasons
of inhale and exhale
a stillness etched in rock and color
river water and wind,
with a sky on time lapse,
night and day of slow dancing clouds
gathering and releasing rain
for the simple gentle beauty
of completing another cycle
before she asked:
But what does that mean?
I’m going to be a professional prayer
I told her.
And there was again the loving silence
of a parent whose child
has just expressed an improbable dream
like being the first Black American Queen of England
or a democratic president of the NRA.
No one wants to say
No Sweetheart, you can’t fly with paper wings,
on the off chance that just this once
they will lift and bend beyond law
to the higher nature of children’s dreams
but no one wants
to be the parent that didn’t explain gravity well enough
to keep their child from leaping from the roof.
I had seen this look before,
the measured belief tempered with a healthy skepticism,
a mommy pragmatism
that is always followed up with gentle reminders
about mortgages to pay and how health insurance
is really a great thing to have.
I felt the weight of doubt then,
What is this thing I have been called to do?
Do I even understand it enough to achieve it?
The intersection of mind and spirit,
law, word, and speaking truth into experience.
I imagine myself like Oprah
praying forth new cars and dream vacations,
the squeal of elation,
the jumping up and down
of my own captive audience,
or a Houdini
disappearing need
with flashy hand claps and tambourines.
I might need a theme song
and a roving band of musicians,
at minimum a chorus of Hallelujah girls
to punctuate the miracle
of every shimmering, gold star treatment.
But what happens is very quiet.
Within the canyons of gentle space surrounding
the field of my dream,
the No is carefully withheld
a deep swirling measure of glitter swells
with the in breath
before my mother tells me:
Well that’s cool.
If you blinked
you might have missed it,
but I didn’t.
Another answered prayer to check off the list.

On Praying
There is a part of me that is afraid of getting what I really want. Call it superstition. Knit evil eye covers and toss salt over left shoulder. Genies are never to be trusted. And wishes, carefully meted. No one wants the Midas touch, or to pray for rain from drought only to call in floods. And yet there is a want in me, a river I shade with palm fronds to muffle the rapids, to make it look smaller than it really is. But this water is deep within me and never still, a rushing of please and yes. I don’t want to want too much, don’t want my need to run naked through the streets flashing all my insecurities. To pray is to admit to longing. I would rather these unpleasantries be handled discreetly in back alley way deals with devils and demigods, with contractual agreements that mitigate things like miracles, place reasonable limits to what you can expect so that no one can say you didn’t know what you were getting. I’m not sure anymore if I am more afraid to be surprised by my good or by my bad, it is the never knowing that haunts me. The best surprise is no surprise, but that is the one that never shows up. Do I wade now? Baptize myself in the truth of what is missing then call on sun to dry me on the shores when I am made new and ready to receive? Or do I stay in the forest of my discontent another season? Place my bets on just enough to get by.
Some thoughts on God
How I wish you were a vending machine
filled with Tahitian vacations and diamond chokers,
a huggable life-sized Snuggle bear
that would pull me into your embrace on bad days
or better yet, a magical remote control to stop and pause
rewind and recreate my life until it is just right,
movie perfect and Hollywood happy ending worthy.
But you are God with a capital G
and I neither understand you
nor feel your hand in mine.
I might have seen you before,
from the corner of my eye,
the flint of you,
felt the warmth of your breath
at the nape of my neck.
You have made the hair there raise up in surprise,
But every time I turn to see you
You are not where I think you will be.
I am tired of hide and seek.
You win.
Ollie Ollie Oxen free,
Come out and explain to me
What this all means,
This messy hodge podge of miracles and disease,
Of free will and destiny
Can you just tell me
PLEASE
I promise I won’t be pissed
At the spoiler.
The Release
Letting go is the hardest part,
I think I am,
but hands and mind and heart are sticky with want
gooey with greed for things un-promised.
I can name and claim
with the best of them,
stand in knowing and gratitude abundant,
but I don’t want my prayers to disappear.
Once they’re out of eye sight
I get nervous,
like a babysitter with roving toddlers.
There are sockets to stick fingers in,
fragile plants to knock over.
Every time I close my eyes
I know my prayers are
falling down stairs or wandering into traffic,
swallowing bleach and playing with matches.
I need to gather them back to me
to make sure they’re okay
then I might venture to send them out again
when they are a little older
a bit more developed.

Joy...

My poetry is always kind of gritty. The Leader of my spiritual community recently described it as something that will make you laugh, cry, and sometimes want to punch somebody in my face. I took that as a great compliment, though I would like to expand my emotional range to the other side of the spectrum. It's not always easy to talk about dark things, to be sad, angry, or hurt on paper, but harder still is trying to capture and translate joy, happiness, elation. Maybe it's because I understand happiness less, whereas I am intimately familiar with depression, rejection, and rage...plus it makes for compelling writing. But as I explore the power of my word, I have learned how to purge. I have learned how to use my writing as a forum to release my demons, but now I would like to start invoking my good. I want joy to resonate. I want peace, fulfillment, a sense of happy expectancy to vibrate out...so I guess I have to get to writing.

Being a Plus-Sized Diva

Where I work we have cubicals. I know this is a somewhat standard practice, but I don't think I've ever worked in a place with cubicals before. I sit in a block of six. There are three of us Organizers and three Reps. Store reps, by the nature of their job aren't at their desks very often. They are the people who visit the stores and make sure workers are being respected by management...actually I am discovering that they do way more than that, but I digress. The reps come and go and we say hi to each other when they are around, but it has been a very slow process getting to know them, given their schedules.

The Rep closest to me is a black woman too. We've discovered that we live near one another and have some things in common. She is a person who really cares a lot for her members. Sometimes she gets sad. I watch her fight for them. I see her struggle. Sometimes she goes all day without eating because she just keeps working. I have taken to leaving fruit on her desk from time to time, just to remind her to eat. A few days ago I left a poem on her desk to remind her to breathe...it's a poem I wrote a few months ago after the Oscars when the Onion called a 9 year old black girl a cunt. It was a bad day for me as a black woman. I took it really personally, so I wrote a piece called On Being Black and a Butterfly which is kind of my homage to self love. Well she really liked it, and instead of rushing off to work, she lingered to talk to me.

Somehow we got on the subject of weight. She is a self proclaimed Plus-Sized Diva. I have always been weird about my weight. It exists, but I would prefer not to talk about it. I was like that 40 lbs ago, even when I was in shape and practically lean and I am certainly like that now that I am growing into my roundness. I have never once considered myself a plus-sized diva. I've seen Monique on tv making her jokes and wearing her fabulous clothes and while I admired her, I never really thought about it as something I could relate to. But when my friend said it, when she claimed it the way she did, I thought well why not? Why not celebrate where I'm at today, the beauty I am rocking this moment as opposed to holding my breath, sucking in my stomach and saying well I'll be a Diva once I lose that 40lbs. What if I never lose weight? Will I forever be waiting to feel good about my body?

I guess before I thought when women said that it was like a defense mechanism, but when she said it, it didn't feel defensive, it felt peaceful, like she was really the person who should be leaving poems on my desk to remind me that self love is an iterative process, and ongoing initiative that I have lots to learn about. So today I am a Plus Sized Butterfly (Diva still doesn't quite resonate with me-I don't think it will in 40lbs either, so I claiming my own terminology). I am a woman of consequence, a beauty of grand proportions, thick and curvy...and beautiful.  

Absolution

Forgiveness. Yes. It's a concept. It exists. My recovering Catholic friends tell me that Jesus will absolve you of all your sins if you just admit them and say you're sorry. And it's not a one time thing. You can do the same bullshit over and over again and still get right with the Lord. Though I am not sure if they even really believe that. And Jesus is usually not the person I feel like I need forgiveness from anyway.

Here is my deep dark secret. I have hurt people, really cool people, people I love. And I realize that intent is irrelevant. I realize it because they have hurt me too, sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident and the end result is exactly the same-total suckage.

So now what?What happens when you have confessed your sins and apologized? How do you move forward? How can you trust those other people not to hurt you again? How can you trust yourself not to hurt them either? They say scar tissue is the strongest tissue in the body, but no one talks about the fact that it is rigid, that it doesn't bend the way the unwounded areas do, and there is strength in flexibility. So I have started to pray, as though this might stretch my scars. I pray for true mutual forgiveness, for freedom from suckage, for protection from future hurts, for unicorns, and winning lottery tickets. And so far, no lotto.

How long does absolution take? Is it coming? Can I put my ear to the rails and listen for the rumble like an oncoming train? Just wondering...

Love and Guatemala: The Launch

Thanks again to everyone who came out for my book launch. It was an awesome experience to be able to share my work and little of what went into it. Love and Guatemala is a collection of poetry and one not very short story written over the course of several years. The Guatemala section was written as a part of one of my five trips to Guatemala. The love section are just my from time to time poems. The story was inspired by David Levithan, one of my favorite authors and editors. Here is the video of my launch. Special thanks to Jeff Jordan for filming and of course to Rev Allen Mosely and the Amor Spiritual Center for hosting not only my launch, but also my monthly writer's group.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2vCH4AkpgE

My Evening With The Missionaries

Last night I went to a friend’s house and met some missionaries. As a rule, I tend to avoid any situation that involves religious proselytizing, but I really wanted to see my friend and her baby and if that meant hearing the spiel so be it. It was actually very interesting. The missionaries were a husband and wife who had “so much love in their heart for the Cambodian people” that they moved to Cambodia 12 years ago to spread the message of Jesus. This is usually the time when my more sarcastic, social justice self righteousness kicks into hyper drive and I am internally sermonizing about the objectification of brown people and the fallacy of the great white savior come to heal the brown heathens. But as I said, I was in the home of a friend, so I chose to suspend my skeptical annoyance long enough to really consider the merits of what this couple had chosen to do with their life.


They started by trying to help Cambodian Christians strategize for how to get the word out about Christ, but through their work they realized that there were other pressing issues facing the Cambodian people, such as lack of literacy, basic hygiene standards, and the proliferation of human trafficking. They talked about how other White people had visited areas of rural Camobia theoretically to provide the community with food and clothing, then they asked the villagers to sign letters verifying they had received the donations. Being illiterate, they were allowed to simply ink their thumbprints, but in doing so they were not signing the documents that had been explained to them, they were signing away their land rights. A few weeks later, they were forcible removed from their homes by White People using their very thumbprints as evidence that their land did not belong to them anymore. Familiar story?

So the couple began hosting literacy classes and eventually started their own orphanage. They also teach adults how to lead groups and they prep Cambodians to educate other Cambodians about the dangers of sex trafficking.

While I may not agree with their need to Christianize Cambodia, I have to admit that I was touched by their sincerity and also it sounds to me like they might actually be making a difference. They are following a calling, but I suspect it is one that is much deeper than spreading religion. They are spreading literacy and self empowerment, which to me seems even more important and special.

Why is it so hard to see your own footprint? To have a genuine understanding of the ripple you are making on the world? As I am preparing for my book launch tomorrow, I have been in long conversations with a number of supportive friends. I have come to realize that what I am doing, in choosing to self publish my work and teaching others to self publish, has already had a much greater impact than I ever anticipated. People are telling me that I am inspiring them to follow their dreams. I don’t know about all that, but it is my hope that I can walk through my life with some measure on integrity and that even my mistakes might somehow make sense in the long view of things. I guess we’ll see.