Reclaimation

Sometimes a day for mourning what was lost is also a day for celebrating what was, what remains, and what has grown out of the ashes of all the losses. I've done a lot of grieving. There is always more. And there is always more to praise too. Today I am feeling so grateful for my incredible body, soul, and spirit, for enduring and learning to thrive beyond violence, violation, and loss.

tonight's soliloquy

To bike to the co-op
or not to bike.
That is the question.
Whether tis nobler in the mind to endure the rain and wind of outrageous weather
or take comfort against a sea of pillows
and within them, drink tea...


ahhh...be all my sins remembered

The auspicous week is upon us and

welp... if Mercury wasn't already going Retrograde it sure as fuck is now.

0.0

"why should I forgive?
under what guise
was I brought to this life?

to scour away
the empty pain
of no-commitment."

question of the week:

is it possible for women to work, in good conscience and self-care, with or "under" men who refuse to acknowledge their privilege or the inherent power dynamics of living in a patriarchy (or, for that matter, who refuse to even acknowledge the reality of the patriarchy and systematic oppression of women)?

and, furthermore, is it possible to have ANY meaningful relationship with a man who refuses to acknowledge AND actively work against these power dynamics on an ongoing basis?

fucking hell. i just want a pizza.

On Trying to Talk With a Man

"Out in this desert we are testing bombs,

that's why we came here.

Sometimes I feel an underground river
forcing its way between deformed cliffs
an acute angle of understanding
moving itself like a locus of the sun
into this condemned scenery.

What we’ve had to give up to get here –
whole LP collections, films we starred in
playing in the neighborhoods, bakery windows
full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies,
the language of love-letters, of suicide notes,
afternoons on the riverbank
pretending to be children

Coming out to this desert
we meant to change the face of
driving among dull green succulents
walking at noon in the ghost town
surrounded by a silence

that sounds like the silence of the place
except that it came with us
and is familiar
and everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out –
coming out here we are up against it

Out here I feel more helpless
with you than without you
You mention the danger
and list the equipment
we talk of people caring for each other
in emergencies - laceration, thirst -
but you look at me like an emergency

Your dry heat feels like power
your eyes are stars of a different magnitude
they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT
when you get up and pace the floor

talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else."

--Adrienne Rich--

Women/Wilderness

Ursula K. Le Guin AND Susan Griffin  (!?!) on the oppression of women and wilderness.
from Le Guin's essay "Woman/Wilderness" in her book "Dancing at the Edge of the World":


Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is Other—outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women and the wilderness, to be used as I see fit.

To this, Civilized Woman (in the voice of Susan Griffin) replies as follows:
"We say there is no way to see his dying as separate from her living, or what he had done to her, or what part of her he had used. We say if you change the course of this river you change the shape of the whole place.
"And we say that what she did then could not be separated from what she held sacred in herself, what she had felt when he did that to her, what we hold sacred to ourselves, what we feel we could not go on without, and we say if this river leaves this place, nothing will grow and the mountain will crumble away, and we say what he did to her could not be separated from the way that he looked at her, and what he felt was right to do to her, and what they do to us, we say, shapes how they see us.
"That once the trees are cut down, the water will wash the mountain away and the river be heavy with mud, and there will be a flood. And we say that what he did to her he did to all of us. And that one fact cannot be separated from another.
"And had he seen more clearly, we say, he might have predicted his own death. How if the trees grew on that hillside there would be no flood. And you cannot divert this river.
"We say look how the water flows from this place and returns as rainfall, everything returns, we say, and one thing follows another, there are limits, we say, on what can be done and everything moves.
"We are all a part of this motion, we say, and the way of the river is sacred, and this grove of trees is sacred, and we ourselves, we tell you, are sacred."
(reminds me so much of this poem of mine: http://alexceberg.blogspot.com/2014/07/dear-mountain-love-river-part-2.html)

truth

"If a man knew what a woman never forgets, he would love her differently."

-Terry Tempest Williams-

In Case You Ever Need It, It is Here (poem)

"Take this as yours
Rip this from the book
of make a copy
fold it in half
and half again
and put it in your wallet
or between the mattress and the box spring
or taped under your desk
so it is there
if.

Know this: what happened
to your body
to your head
to your heart
is not your fault.
It is not something you caused
or deserved.

It is like blaming yourself
for someone hitting your hand
with a hammer.
(If that person is you,
put the hammer down.
Let it be an accident.
Let it be the end.)

The body, heart, brain knows
how to heal. It knows how to knit
back together. How to suture
and secure. Let it do what it does.
Your body is yours.Your body
will always be yours.

You are not what happened.
Your whole life
is not just this. You do not speak
a language made of this, this is
not your name. 

Your name is your own.

Let your name be
The name of someone who
can do the unthinkable:
Stands up and keeps moving.
You are standing. You are taking
a shower and eating breakfast.
You are going to classes
or going to work. You are doing
impossibly hard things. Keep going
and keep going and there
is summer. Laugh even if it is
with rage. Open your mouth
and your fists. Tell the truth.
Tell a friend. Listen to someone
else's heart. it is beating
a miracle. You are
Both here.

When scars are new,
They shine. Be all the glitter
You need."

--Daphne Gottlieb--

process

"On the Weirdness of
The Creative Impulse:

Earth, Fire, Water
If you would create
from original self...

See that rock over there?
Be impatient with the rock...
and nothing happens.

Say, 'Nice rock,
nice rock,'
and nothing happens.

Stare at rock
without end.
Nothing happens.

Pick up rock--
take it over there.
Stare at it.
Pick rock back up
and move it back
where it began.
Nothing
comes of it.

But/and...
Be gently
angry with the rock,
bust it to pieces
and add peaceful
water
to make clay--

Then fashion
the clay
into a vessel
that will hold
the peace of water
from what was
once
wroth by anger.

This is one
of the most
important lessons
of creating...
Impatience
and all the rest
too often
go nowhere.

A gentled
anger often has
true potential
if broken down,
and transformed
in
and to
peace.

I know you know
from soul outward
what this means.

The soul
ever knows
how earth,
fire,
and water
need
one another."

Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes

[nightmares] until then

Until
by Indu Iyer

"Women live in the silences between men
in between the daggers of words
the shards of hate
the pummels of fists.
We live in the spaces
carved out between
abuse
in between the cat calls
the gropings
the unwanted penetration.
Between discomfort and
pure horror
we fight to stay alive.
as we tiptoe to not wake
him in the morning
as we hold secret bank accounts,
as we call fellow women for help
only once he has gone to work.
We fight as we wear
running shoes instead of sandals
carry keys in our hand
when we walk at night
give fake numbers
to men in bars
not wanting to unpin a grenade.
This fighting
is not valiant and rewarding.
it is degrading business
it turns women into mice
scurrying from corner to corner
with our feet peddling
as fast as they can
trying to locate a crumb
or a nibble of cheese
amid a world of cats.
Let me be clear – Women are not mice.
Women will not be made into pestilence
by those men who choose to hate us.
We will not live in little holes
between the floor boards
we will not be prisoners
in our own homes, our streets, our cities.
We will not live in the spaces between
our abusers and attackers.
We will fight.
We will cauterize our wounds
with our rage
We will rise like
walls of an inferno
ferocious
relentless
undeniable
each day
every day
Until every woman who says “I was raped” is believed.
Until prostitution is no longer an option.
Until pornography is a relic of the past.
Until women do not fear
our own fathers or brothers
our friends, teachers, lovers
because they might believe
they own our bodies
our minds
our words
our lives.
Until every living person knows
without question
that women do not exist merely
to please men
to serve men
to fuck men,
But that women are survivors
that women are warriors
that women are above all
human.
Until love without tyranny
is not a dream
but the only love
ever known to woman
at all."

(From the Montreal Massacre Memorial on the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women)

ok already

"it's only after you've lost everything that you can do anything."

Rooted wandering

"Sometimes I feel like a hobbit watching orks decimate the Shire. I FEEL the land as it is being destroyed. I feel the idiot darkness in those who put the profit motive above the future of life. We love the hobbits so much because they embody our subconscious yearning for home, for tribal community, for humble, beautiful living and for a deep, unwavering relationship with place - with land we can tend and love and know. We love Bilbo so much because he is the hobbit who can know home, yet still be a wanderer. Oh fellow wanderers - it's time to return home and make a stand for our forests, our watersheds, our mountain tops, our salmon, our seed. If you are constantly distracted by the journey, you won't feel the orks coming. You won't notice what's being lost. Those oil companies want you to be addicted to the fuel it takes to perpetuate your flight - so attached to your physical freedom that you will fight for cheap oil rather than get real about how your own unteathered lifestyle is destroying your untended back yard. I'm not saying don't travel... i'm just saying, get real."

~~Samantha Sweetwater~~

grounded flight

"I had to unlearn their prison speak,
refuse to make wishes on the star
on the sheriff's chest.

I started wishing on the stars instead.
I said to the sun, 'Tell me about the big bang.'
The sun said, 'It hurts to become.'

I carry that hurt on the tip of my tongue
and whisper 'bless your heart' every chance I get
so my family tree can be sure I have not left.

You do not have to leave to arrive.
I am learning this slowly.
So sometimes when I looking the mirror
my eyes look like the holes in the shoes
of the shoe shine man.

Sometimes my hands are busy on the wrong things.
Some days I call my arms 'wings'
while my head is in the clouds.

It will take me a few more years to learn flying
is not pushing away from the ground."

-Andrea Gibson,
excerpt from her poem I Sing the Body Electric, Especially When My Power's Out.

the work.

Chop wood

Carry water

Write poetry

Fight the power

The Girl Who Goes Alone

"Here’s the thing about being a girl

and wanting to play outside.

All the grown-ups grind it into you from the get go:

girls outside aren’t safe.

The guy in the car? If he rolls down the window and leans

his head out, run

because the best you can hope for is a catcall, and at worst

you’ll wind up with your face on the side of a milk carton.

Even when you’re a grownup girl, your father—because

he loves you—

will send you a four-page article about how to protect yourself

while standing at the ATM, while traveling unescorted, while

jogging solo,

an article informing you how to distinguish phony police

and avoid purse snatchers, pickpockets, rapists, and thugs.

Tell someone you’re going into the woods alone

and they’ll story your head with trail-side cougar attacks,

cave dwelling misogynists, lightning strikes, forest fires,

flash floods,

and psychopaths with a sixth sense for a woman alone in a tent.

To be a girl alone in the wilderness is to know

that if something goes wrong—

you picked the trailhead where the ax murderer lurks

or the valley of girl-eating gophers—

if you don’t come home intact, the mourning

will be mixed with I-told-you-sos

from everyone whose idea of camping involves an RV

or a Motel 6.

The message is clear: Girls must be chaperoned.

So, when, at the end of the day, you zip up the tent

and lie back in your sleeping bag,

fleece jacket bundled into a lumpy pillow under your head,

the second you close your eyes every least night noise

is instantly magnified.

You lie there and consider the pungent heft of menstrual blood,

how even your sweat is muskier, louder, when you’re bleeding.

Not hard to imagine its animal allure—every bear

for miles around sniffing you on the night wind.

You lie there, listening, running a mental inventory of any

potentially scented item—

did every one make it into the food bag hung from a tree?

Toothpaste, trailmix, chapstick, sunscreen—fuck.

Sunscreen still in your pack, nestled right beside you

where Outdoor Man used to sleep. So you’re up, out of the tent

headlamp casting its too-bright spotlight, darkening the dark

outside its reach

as you lower the bag, shove the sunscreen in, hoist and tie.

Far enough from the ground to elude the bears?

Far enough along the branch to thwart raccoons?

Tree far enough from the tent to keep from signaling

the proximity of ground-level, girl-shaped snacks?

You go alone—in part—to prove that though Outdoor Man

has left you

his body is the only geography he can deprive you of.

He can give his muscled calves and thighs, his shoulders, chest,

and hands

to another woman, but not the Sauk River old growth,

snow fields of Rainier, sea stacks of Shi Shi.

He can keep you from the sweet, blood-thrilling hum

of his body, but not the sweaty, blood-thumping

pleasure of a hard-earned panoramic view or high altitude

starlight.

The thing about being a girl who goes alone, who goes

again and again, is that it freaks

the potential next boyfriend. He doesn’t want

to be out machoed and he doesn’t want to admit it

and he hopes you can’t tell. The thing

about being the girl who still goes alone is that it proves

you don’t need him and no matter how you show him you

want him

it’s not the same

and you both know it.

Zipped back into the tent you remind yourself you’ve never

really been in danger.

When have you ever been in danger? Well there was that boy,

but years ago

a teenager like you, driving around bored and pissed

at the world, his BB gun and his father’s two rifles

on the seat beside him. Lucky you.

The gun he leveled on the window ledge

lodged nothing more than a BB in your thigh.

The thing about being a girl alone in the woods is

you know too much

about the grain of truth in the warnings.

Even if you seem impervious, weird good luck leaving you

so far unscathed

you know the other girls’ stories—your sister

date raped after a party in college, a friend

raped by a stranger at knife-point, the two women

shot on the Pinnacle Lake trail, the singer

killed by coyotes in Nova Scotia.

The thing

about being a girl

who goes alone

is that you feel like you shouldn’t go

if you’re afraid. If you go it should mean you’re not afraid,

that you’re never afraid. Your friends will think that you go

unafraid.

This girl

who goes alone

is always afraid, always negotiating to keep the voices

in her head at a manageable pitch of hysteria.

I go knowing that there will be a moment—maybe

long moments, maybe

hours of them, maybe the whole trip—

when I curse myself for going alone.

When I lie in the tent and all I am is fear.

I walk into the wilderness alone

because the animal in me needs to fill her nose

with the scent of stone and lichen,

ocean salt and pine forest warming in early sun.

I walk in the wilderness alone so I can hear myself.

So I can feel real to myself.

I go because I know I’m lucky to have a car, gas money, days off

the back and legs and appetite

to take me there.

I go while I still can.

The girl who goes alone

claims for herself

the madrona      juniper     daybreak.

She claims hemlock    prairie    falcon    nightfall

nurse    log    sea star    glacial moraine

huckleberry    trillium     salal

snowmelt    avalanche lily    waterfall

birdsong    limestone    granite    moonlight    schist

cirque     saddle    summit     ocean

she claims the curve of the earth.

The girl who goes alone says with her body

the world is worth the risk."

--Elizabeth Austen--

from my first solo backpacking trip

The Dosewallips in Olympic National Park

up to Dose Meadows and Hayden Pass

 September 15th-19th, 2014 

8.2 miles bike-packing  

30.2 miles backpacking

4.6+ miles day hiking

43 miles total

for solitary, solidarity

and circularity

 

for spirit, soul

and body 

for you

and

for me

<3

what flying requires.

"In work of love, the body
forgets its weight. And once 
again with love and singing 
in mind, I come to what 
must come to me, carried 
as a dancer by a song.
This grace is gravity."
~Wendell Berry

As It Is. [Layers].

unconditional

"I curse [and love] my curse
which is to love the curse;
to love unconditionally;
which is to love the lovers back to love;
to love the lost back to life;
to love when loving means losing;
to love when loving means losing myself;
to love when loving means losing
what I thought was wrong and right
[what I thought was black and white];
to love to love to love;
and to love to love to feel
all that comes with love."


(from before. 3/16/14)

tell me about it

tension

"a wild patience
has taken me this far."
Adrienne Rich

("DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE COST OF THIS PATIENCE HAS BEEN?!")
(Susan Griffin)

the ones who held.

"POSSIBILITY.

Gravity.

We dealt with hunger. We dealt with cold. We were the ones who held things together. Knit one, purl two. We were the ones who, after working all day, made the meals. And the beginning. We made sure everybody ate. And the end. We were the ones who, if the cupboard was bear, faced the open mouths of our children. And the way we thought grew from what we did. And the end and the beginning. We were the ones who nursed the dying through death. The wheel. The ones who birthed, who had blood on our hands, the ones who suckled. We fed the calves and milked the cows. We worked in the fields. We wrung the neck of the chicken, and tended the fire that cooked the stew. The double ax. These labors shaped our thinking. We were the ones who watched the wearing down and the daily mending and did what had to be done with the lost. We were the ones who knew what it all meant. Each breath. The cost. The years. We knew the limits. Gravity. And what had to be done. We knew the length of caring. The weight. We felt children come to life in our bodies; even if we had no children we knew what the necessities were. The pull. Our hands made decisions we knew had to be made The motion.  when there was no more caring, when there was no more food. The end and the beginning. Our bodies knew loss. The circle. Our bodies knew limitation. We were weary. The gravitational pull. Our limbs made the decision to move. Day after day we kept things going. Knit one, purl two. We were the ones who held things together. Purl two, knit one. And we were the ones who unraveled the patterns. Who refused to move. The centrifugal force. We were the ones who resisted. We were the ones who decided this can go on no longer, and placed our bodies in the way. The curve of light. What we thought came out of what we did. The lens. And we learned by doing. The focus. Necessity forced us to act together. The reflection. And we were the ones who learned from closeness. We smoothed the way from one to another. We saw the pulling away and the cleaving. We balanced the weight of needs in our hands. Knit one. And we waited for the right time. The bread rising. So if one of us was brave purl two all of us were filled with courage. The circle of motion. We did what they called impossible. The verb. We existed in ways they called unreal. The word. But our ideas came from what we did. And that is how we imagined The pull what we could do. And doing made us imagine more. And so our thoughts were grave the double ax and yet we laughed together. Knit one, purl two. We were the ones The beginning who held the dying and the grieving and the end and the birthing and the born. The weight And this is why we hold each other. The weight of this earth. And this is how our thinking has formed."

--Susan Griffin, from Women and Nature

well, this found me tonight...quite accurately

From an Atlas of the Difficult World

"I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are."

-Adrienne Rich 

dear everyone: a lesson in consent and respecting each other's boundaries.

The absence of "no" does not mean "yes."
"I don't know" means "no" until further notice.
"Maybe" means fuckin "maybe," but "no" until further notice.

Only "yes," enthusiastic, wholehearted, "yes!" means "yes."



It's not that hard.
And if someone is violated, be careful not to repeat the violation when trying to help them.
Ask and listen. Please.

beauty in brokenness [mosaic]

An image:

everything precious is shattered.

[is that just the nature of the world? disintegration?
of humanity? desecration?
and then...]

our job is to take the shards, the flecks, the brokenness, and piece it back together
as a mosaic--
as something new
something more true
more unique and real
to who we are
and the nature of it all
(yes, all of it:
even the wounding. the shadow. the grotesque.)

just like the cocoon
disassembles,
dissolves everything
a caterpillar is,
and rearranges it
to have [multicolored] wings. 

water and rock

"Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong."
-Lao Tzu

.

the sacred is desecrated
the most precious things are shattered

restoration is my path.

trying to believe in a reason

"It's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything."

Quaker Proverb

"Blessed are the vulnerable, for they shall break open the heart of the universe."

Cocoon.

"In their dispute, both nature and culture are correct. You do belong to both. But your personal development requires that you not choose a side, that you simultaneously hold the opposing claims and withstand the tension between them. This conscious holding of opposites will, itself, constitute a significant stimulus to your maturation within the cocoon. It might even be one of the primary factors."

Bill Plotkin
Nature and the Human Soul
The Wanderer In the Cocoon.

Voices on love, particularity, integrity, gravity, and staying with.

"Sometimes the most radical act is to stay home."

"To bear witness [to know] is not a passive act." 
"It all comes down to relationships" [and having] "a heightened curiosity of other."
"If we don't know who we live among, then when they vanish, there's no one to mourn that loss."
"The challenge is to stay. The challenge is to be present with that pain.
and "making commitments to do the real work, the hard work" [of being in relationship.]

--Terry Tempest Williams



"To love means to stay with.
[...]
to love means to stay with when every cell says 'Run!'"
--Clarissa Pinkola Estes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




Staying home.
Coming home.
Knowing who we live with.
Knowing them so we can love them, honor them, protect them in their own integrity.
Then we can be in ours.

Standing ground.
Standing tall, in place.
Rising rooted like trees.
Rooted to the earth.
Rooted to each other.
[Tethered in the heart.]
The challenge is to stay.
The challenge is particularity.
To know and be known
truly and fully, and to stand in our own truth with integrity.
To be accountable to ourselves, and each other.
To hold to what is difficult.
To hold to the difficult in relationship
and see it through, to understanding,
acceptance, and love.
To hold to the difficult.
To not abandon each other.
To never abandon each other. 

To never abandon the crying scared child in each other's deepest hearts.
To love each other back to life,
back to truth,
back to wholeness,
and the knowingness that we belong
here,
together. 

"to gather the things within my reach and to protect them." -Will Falk (from his essay To Be a Warrior Poet)

To protect them. The things we are in relationship to. The particularities of our lives.
 
To not enact the violence of indifference and uncaring, that is perpetuated by cultural mindsets of separation, individualism, and interchangeability, hardness, distance, and cold reason.

To feel each other's pain.



Peggy O'Mara:
"Don't stand unmoving outside the door of a crying baby whose only desire is to touch you. Go to your baby. Go to your baby a million times."

Alison Rose Levy:
"Hearing the cries of the world means hearing the cries of a baby whether that baby is one month old or 100 years old and whether that baby is a human, a kitty, or an elephant cub.
This is offered to the people who know what to do, and the people who know but have forgotten. It is offered especially to those who were left crying because someone stood outside the door... either through hesitation, fear, numbness, hardness, or any other agenda or 'reason.'
May those who remember reach out for the millionth time.
May those who know but forget, remember.
For those who hesitate, doubt or fear, listen to the cry and allow it to move you to courageous action, more courageous than what any warrior pose can teach you.
And for those with numbness, hardness, and other agendas and reasons, only by allowing the cry to reach your heart and melt your plans, your agendas, and your reasons into a puddle that runs out the door, down the gutter and into the river, only then will you yourself heal, only then will you become capable of serving as an agent of healing, and only then will the empty space within the many words spoken be filled with the tears of truth.
And for those who cry out for any wrong or grief, any loss, betrayal or hurt, may you find consolation, may you find your natural community of protectors, may you draw to you those capable of deep caring-- and may your consolation become the consolation of the earth. Because as your soul swims softly outward on its outflowing tears and your heart speaks its truth and finds gentle listeners, so you become the bearer of the truth that lives in the heart of all and the one who always listens and answers.
Do you hear the call?"Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
"A tear, heard by anyone of heart, is understood as a cry to come closer."

Alison Rose Levy:
"It's not merely about the newborn either. We all carry that cry and when the duress becomes too great, it emerges. There are those who listen when the sound is no more than a whisper. And there are those who are deaf when a loved one or child is screaming-- or they blame that child. And that is the inhumanity that is upon the land and within many of us in these times."

Alison Rose Levy:
"From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act." You know people say, 'Don't get too involved in this, it's not your problem.' Like we all live in little boxes and what goes on beyond that wall doesn't exist. With enough acreage you can live like an ostrich and feel free while enjoying the view. This is exactly the fragmentation of community that is turning the earth into a hell zone."

Sarah Alexander:
"We are strongly being pulled now to face our shadows squarely, honestly, without shame, in order to understand what is still holding us back and to let it go. It is hard enough to be honest with ourselves; much less with others. But every. single. time. we. take. a. breath. and. speak. truth. we become freer to act in integrity, and thus liberate humanity a little more from bondage."


Integrity. From Integritas, meaning Intact. Whole. Undivided. Sound.

Alison Rose Levy:
"For me, there is just no way of integrity in standing by while harm is happening and being tolerated. And to act far away and not be righteous up close doesn't count for much. Nor does being a warrior for yourself but not on behalf of those you love."

Sandra Steingraber:
"We are not beautiful by how we look but by how we love, not attractive by what we wear but by what we give and not smart in how we talk but in how we act."


Aloofness might just be the worst thing for this world.
It is like floating above, imaginally,
pretending to not be subject to the gravity
of the situation;
pretending that you are not connected to all everything.


It is in relationship that we feel the heavy weight of our connection. It is meant to be heavy. It is meant to be hard. That is how we know what is real. We can't turn away from that.
Gravity is here to hold us to what we belong to.
We can pretend to cast it off with carelessness, coolness, lightness. We can pretend that there is distance, that these particularities don't matter, aren't real. We can pretend that we can fly off easy into other spaces, novel, new, simple. We can try.
But here, now, we are subject to gravity, in all that we do.
We will be held to it. This is true accountability.
This is not something meaninglessly draped over us, weighting us down unnecessarily, keeping us from moving fast enough toward our dreams, or something we can cast off. Our dreams are bound in it, by it. Our dreams of freedom are bound in and by our relationships to each other. We cannot be free without them. We are bound to them, and our freedom is in how we embrace this.
That is gravity's law.
That is the weight, the heaviness, the difficulty of relationship.
And this is to be honored with our attention, with open, feeling hearts. Hearts that are willing to be heavy, willing to be bound, willing to be hurt. 
Hurting. Bleeding.
That is love.
Not easy. Not floating. Not painless. Not free. But bound in one another's lives and love and pain.
Bound in promise.
Promise being the root of "response"
as in responsibility.
as in response-ability.
as in being present.
as in active relating.

as in spontaneous co-arising.
as in true relationship.

Ben Garrison: 
"A choice to live sacred And because love would lead us to believe that we all belong to the earth and to each other.with hope and desire. bound to a future." [together.]


If we act as though everything is passing, and can pass without impact or float by without pain; if we act as thought we can float, unscathed, in a world of sharp edges trying to meet and fit in a better way; if we do not love particularly; if our love isn't heavy and doesn't hurt to hold some times...
then we are just kidding ourselves. What is any of that worth?

No. Gravity, heaviness, being bound together, that is what makes us creatures worthy and capable of love.
That we can hurt and love.
That we can love and hurt.
That we can love in spite of hurt
not in lieu of it.
Yes.
That we can love in spite of hurt, not in lieu of it.
And that we are bound to do so.
And that we then bind to each other.
And that we then, inevitably, hurt.
And that we then, still, again, hold to love, and hold to each other, despite.
And that we then understand and remember our responsibility to honor that love with our actions.



That is embracing gravity.
That is integrity.

That is love.



"The weight of the world
is love.

--Alan Ginsberg

The Pattern

This is the pattern:

Mothers
too-good
too-strict
just trying to protect us from
men
with broken glasses taped together by long
tales and compliments that steal
our sight.

This tale--
two girls
two men
two rooms

this is where the sheet rips
and the pattern is severed in
two paths,
the same truth.

(Why couldn't I save her?)

Ten years later
the gravity hits me hard
in the bathroom
brushing my teeth at my mirror-self
and feeling compassion
for the one staring back,
strong, unblinking, gaze
and wondering why I stopped
looking people in the eyes
and holding my head high
like I do
in the mirror.

And then I remembered
the exact moment
in the room
with the man
where that stopped
and all of this started.

Oh the legacy of a moment,
of a few words,
perhaps an offering,
but that robbed me of many things,
and not even close
to everything she lost
in the other room.

~~~

Our mothers are waiting.
When they find out their hands wring
(broken heart-strings)
they scream
that they will kill him.
My mom drives to his house
day after day
for a week
and sits in her car

waiting...

waiting...

too-good. 

~~~

This is the pattern:
Men, taking what they want
and disappearing.
And women
waiting...

Waiting...

and in the meantime,
weaving back together
the tattered patterns of our lives
into some semblance of wholeness.
Mending the tears,
tending to tears
flowing out like an endless river
of sorrow

while the violence rages on

and we wait.

~~~

(What are these silhouettes
that shape so much
of the landscape we live on
with their mining
and their walking away?)

Gravity's Law

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing-
each stone, blossom, child -
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.
This is what the things teach us:
to fall,
patiently trusting our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Gravity

[Reflections on home and relationship, in interpretation of Alfonso Cuarón’s movie Gravity.]

 

Gravity
That we are floating
That we are held down
That we are alone
That we are one
That we are lost
That we are in the right place. 




 

Gravity. 
That we have a home.
That we have love.
Soil.
Soul.
Mud.
That we are all
That we are none.
 

Gravity.
Can't stop crying
can't stop reaching
can't stop trying to grab hold
of everything that's floating away
from me.

Let go.
Tethered in the heart.

Hold on.
We must hold on to love.



 







Gravity.
That we all belong to the earth.
Gravity.
That this is home. 
That we are bound.








Gravity.
Binding.
Gravity. Weighting without crushing.
Gravity. Holding us to what is ours.
Holding us to what we belong to.

Gravity.
Love.
Same thing.

We can float in easy silence

or we can stand
feet pressed in
in the buzzing world
alive
together.



  

 
Gravity.
Howling into the abyss.


Gravity.
Howling our hearts into the silence. 


Gravity.
Howling Howling.
Wailing. Howling. Screaming. Loving. Howling. Moaning. Loving. Barking. Barking. Howling. 
Howling.

Healing.
Wholing.
Wholing. 
Homing. 
Coming home
to the heavy gravity
of particularity,
relationship.

Gravity.
Coming home. 







Gravity.
Surrendering to the weight
of what we belong to.

written 3/10/14

all images from gravitymovie.warnerbros.com

disaster

Today is the 102nd anniversary of the R.M.S. Titanic's collision with the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. The ship sank at 2:20 a.m. on the 15th. This is a poem by Sandy Yannone, my dear teacher and the beloved Writing Center director at Evergreen. She and I share a curious, or maybe not-so-curious, devotion to the Titanic disaster. This poem speaks to much more than that though. It's maybe one of my favorite poems ever.


Maiden Voyage

"I remember this now: a Sunday,
as they mostly always were, late fall, I was
bending over into the back seat of the car
to rearrange the automotive landscape.

Her fingers reached over, gently pressing
my spine like silver flute keys.
I heard the solo even as I felt it, fingered
for a long time, and by long I mean

still. I wish I had straightened up, turned,
and kissed her, a new song,
a tender response to everything
I’ve felt since and after and before

and after her playing my flute. Or
was her hand just warming up,
practicing, before it would leave, needing
a stable place to tap out its questions,

send telegraphs into the sky like Harold Bride
and Jack Phillips sent for days before –
tapping out jovial messages from the first
class passengers on board Titanic

in their delirious denial – so busy
the new Marconi operators could barely keep up
with the news flooding in of impending ice
like the fall before a brutal winter. Except

it was spring, as it is now, just weeks away
from the anniversary of her sinking. I wish
I had made a move that afternoon, used
the binoculars to see the iceberg in time

to turn the ship, to turn around and look
back to kiss her one first time, fold up
like a nautical chart. But I stayed half
bent in the car, asleep at the helm,

while her hand circumnavigated my back. I kept
the memory of that and wrote this poem
instead. And Jack will go down with the ship,
And Harold Bride will survive, and I’m not sure

which one I am and which one is she
or which relics of what we are to each other
will be recovered years later
from the depths of this sea, placed under

glass in an exhibit never called wreckage,
although that’s what all this is, and maybe
all a maiden voyage is ever meant to be."

the conversation

I've been shying away from writing because I have been standing at the edge of an ocean, dug in, while waves of truth and love wash over me, over and over and over, and I haven't had the time or words or perspective to synthesize all of it, or any. But I am seeing now that it just may not be the time for synthesis, but for living in the washing over and over, and expressing purely whatever it is that washes through me.

These are the themes.

Being vulnerable is probably the most important thing I've ever done.

"As it happens, the wall between us is very thin.

Why couldn't a cry from one of us break it down?
It would crumble easily, it would barely make a sound."

Rilke

 ~~~

Conversation is about finding understanding.

Breaking these walls

or discovering

that they were never there.

[Listen]

 

 [Talk to me]

Everything is a conversation.

Everything is a puzzle.

How do these two,three, four things

people, pieces fit together?

A puzzle.

How does my hand fit the rock?

Perfectly. Just there. 

Particularity.

My hand.

That rock.

Fit.

And so I climb

there,

that wall

and suddenly

the wall is not a wall

it is my life.

We are one.

~~~

Particularity.

Love particularly,

though

love

is not

particularly

particular

about who, what, how it loves.

Or it is.

I'll say it again though:

Love particularly.

Love the particularity of

his face

her voice

that sunset

my own words

that day.

That day.

That moment

of heart-shattering breath.

But then

love all-everything,

everyone.

Because

how could you not?

Because

one 

is all,

right?

[At last, I have to admit it. Because I stood at the edge of that ocean screaming in the night and I was screaming too, and the stars were there, and I was there, and there I was: one, all.]

But don't forget what you are bound to.

Don't forget the decay of time

and who you will rot with

 and where you will rot.

And don't forget

that tree

that you've placed your hands on and sung to 

songs of promise

a hundred times.

And don't forget

the particular slope of that land

that hand

that rock

the curve of that neck

of that lip

of that tooth

in his mouth.

Remember it like your tongue remembers the exact shape of the space inside your molars,

the exact edge of your incisors

overlapping

[over and over]

against each other.

~~~

The problem:

If you feel each particular thing

with this particular love

then you start to love 

every 

single

 inch 

of the world.

And then 

I'm afraid the particularity will start dissolve 

into the stale suburbs 

and crowded streets

of generality.

Because

who doesn't want to be the person

someone's swift-swimming eyes settle upon

and rest 

in the perfect peace of finally finding

what they'd been seeking

?

Who wants to be just one face in the crowd

in a sea of love? 

But love is a sea

washing over and over

me.

I fall 

and I fall 

and I fall 

in love

with everything.

~~~

So how do I know

who and what I belong to

except by 

continuing the conversation

hard as it may be

and it will be

and it is.



But this is probably the most important thing that I can do.