madiana

I trucked the kids to my mother's for the weekend of Munay-Ki and meditation, and dressed and chatted Friday morning with Jess, wrote a blog post here. Prepared with a reading and some coffee, packed up my mesa with a rattle and cross and crystals to make a little grid for ascension. As I drove, I prayed, as I always too, talking to my guides.

Please help keep me focused. Please help me recognize when to speak and when to shut up. Please, Guides, if this is not where I am supposed to be, make it abundantly clear. Help me to roll with the weekend, with no expectations, that I may follow your will for the Highest Good of all. Amen.

I arrived and the rites had been canceled. Only I signed up, apparently, and the lady said someone called. Except no one called. Not on my caller ID, or on my voicemail. And I wondered to no one in particular, "Why would I show up if I knew it was canceled?" The children, and the dog were two hours away, and my day was open suddenly, and my prayers clearly answered, and suddenly, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. While I was disappointed, I decided to roll with it. I drove to my sister's house, and sat with her. It is a hard time for her. We decided to call a friend for a spiritual counselling session, and when we talked, she asked me to paint ten paintings for a party on Thursday where she is channeling angels and guides for ten grieving mothers. She asks me to paint Archangel Azrael, the archangel of grief. And then I remembered an email asking me to do some green prints of the labyrinth I had done.

The universe wants me to paint, and so I put on music, pulled off my sweater, and got down to the business of art, my tank top and dirty brick-laying boots stained up with printing ink and mud, I painted angels and printed cards and felt whole.

I need it all. The art and writing and guitar playing and meditation and crystals and husband-sex and tarot readings, all of it together. That is my density. That is my center. All of it, not one more than the other. It was a wonderful couple of days.

On Saturday, we drove to my mother's house, and talked about places and money and the rest of our lives and responsibility and failure and all that we can be and all that we are and our children, we talked a lot about our children. When we landed, it was before nine, and my mother drove us to a little gem and mineral show, where I oooed and aaahed crystals. I shopped with my mother later, and we stopped for lattes. This morning, there was a flea market, and I bought a few wooden boxes, which I admit are my weakness. Old wooden boxes that smell musty and full of secrets. We came home and my mother, daughter and I painted from strange Chinese Painting How-To set my mother found at a thrift shop. I painted wisteria in dirty purple, and my mother painted blue pod lupine, and my daughter painted fruit in a row on the table. And it was a moment, after a long weekend of beautiful moments, that I felt this was exactly where I needed and wanted to be. I didn't have to comment on it, or ruin it by pointing it out, but it reminded me of this story my friend Carol told me. She was down the shore with her children and friends, and she sat in morning light, in a sweatshirt, sipping coffee with nowhere to go, nothing to do, the waves crashing ashore, her favorite people in the house sleeping, and she thought, "Is this the happiest moment of my life?" I wondered it, and dismissed it, but wondered it nonetheless.

I sip tea and try to remember this story I wanted to tell that was funny to me. It's gone. It's the whole reason I sat down to write this afternoon. It's a bitch getting older. The white hairs are wiry and stubborn, but the long black ones are just as tough but lie flat and submissive. You could weave something magical out of the combination of them, I imagine, like a weaver bird's nest, low and cocooned. My children would climb in and exclaim, "Sing us a funny old song, Mama, while we whistle."

I kick my shoes off, singing Josephine Baker Madiana in fake French. I make some ladybug thumb puppets dance the tango in the hole of their nest, as they squeal in delight. It's the happiest we may ever be, but nevermind, we are too happy to take note. It's almost summer, and the mosquitos haven't come out yet, some workshop was canceled and we have a whole day to fall in love with each other.

protection from cynicism

I rub my finger callouses along the table.

These old fingers peck and strum and emote. I always sing, even though I am a terrible singer. Gilda Radnor took singing lessons in the last year of her life, after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She always wanted to sing and so she went to a teacher. She didn't do it for a role, or to sing for anyone. Just for herself. Some weeks, I sit and fantasize about that. Would singing be my wholly selfish indulgence? How self-conscious I have always been about my voice, but how deeply satisfying it is to sing loudly. And in the end, I think I sound fine when I'm alone and no one is listening. It is an ego koan.

What is the sound of Angie singing alone in the forest? Beautiful.

In the time before mirrors and you tube and the eternal quest for self on the internet, did we judge what we looked like? Were we wrinkled and hated it? Were we too fat? I look at myself without mirrors and feel beautiful, fine, goddess-like some mornings, then I have a conversation with an angry someone about fat people, and realize how susceptible I am to the mirror of other people's words. Frankly, I'm embarrassed about that too.

I took my guitar with me to my mother's and unself-consciously sang songs with my daughter, or alone. It felt delicious. My family was emotionally tender and my daughter and I made the room cry. Even I cried. Grief singing. I couldn't go on. It had been ten years since my mother heard me play and sing. Back when I could only play Doll Parts then Jane Says on an unplugged electric guitar, and I whispered the lyrics, if I sang them at all. I admit now my punk rock roots have morphed into songs by Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman, Leonard Cohen, Stones, the Velvet Underground. 

These rough fingers run down my husband's cheek and he smiles. 

I love when you play guitar.

You do?

Yes. It feels like home.

My soul callouses are worn down, softened. It makes hurts more hurt-y, but it is for the best. I'm not going to work on those cynical chords that recreates the hardness I wore proudly. Sam comes out of left field right after the dude and the conversation about fat people, just when I am feeling shitty and isolated, and says something amazing. He kisses me and tells me that I am gorgeous. Then he asks me if I feel lucky that I am not married to that man.

Oh, you are a mean old daddy, but I like you.

My husband is growing a beard for me and took next week off. After months of sixty hour weeks, I will scratch his whiskers and sit on his lap and call him our Old Man. I keep singing these songs about heartbreak and none of them are about what I think they are about. They are about something beautiful and hopeful.

We wanted to take a trip during his time off. Iceland, we begged. Then just to drive west. To California. The sequoias that swallow cars. Or into the cold rain forest, bed down on some mossy nook, make a sad fire, and sing songs about how we are each other's sunshine. I guess it is kind of square to talk about Joni Mitchell and making a fire. I don't care anymore. I gave up feel self-conscious about squareness when I turned thirty-eight. It didn't work out. The trip, I mean. Travel and gypsy campers, but the thought was enough. We have bills after all, and Christmas gifts. We have this home we built with its strange long horns and collection of small dead insects.. 

I pull a talisman card and it says, "Protection from cynicism." I need that more than any prayer. Maybe that is the prayer:

Help me release cynicism and cranky irony and sarcasm.

Help me let go of the bitter ennui that is the bedfellow of the eternally cool. 

Let me release the cynicism about where I fit in. 

Help me remember that I fit in here. With the bearded man and his barefoot kids dancing to Joni Mitchell's love songs, the ones that sound exactly like break-up songs.

I bought a horn pitcher at an antique shop. It was for my husband's birthday, but on the day, I didn't give it to him. It seemed a little strange, and besides what will we do with this thing? I put it on my altar, and today I had the strong urge to give it to him. So I did. He told me it was perfect to have in our collection of weird antique things. 

I didn't start out writing about my husband. I read the Shack this week. I cannot tell you how many times it has been recommended to me, the pluralist babylost gypsy. I'm not sure what I think of it, but forgiveness and love and the ideas of judgment were more than appealing. And yet there was this deeply cynical part of me that felt self-conscious reading that book at all. It is the wanting-to-be-cool part of myself. Can I divorce that from what I felt about the book? As I read, that part reared up and wanted to tell the book to Fuck off, and throw it, and listen to music that no one has heard of yet. And so I am still parsing out what I think, but I keep the talisman across my chest.

This week I began meditation paintings other than jizos or about grief. It felt strange and liberating and fulfilling. In that space of letting go of cynicism, it made me feel like I was finally be authentically me. And a year ago, painting angels would have felt like anything but the me I thought I was. I am working on releasing cynicism, and non-forgiveness, but it is a long hard road. I keep singing California, even when not at the guitar, and it makes me miss a place I never loved, and a woman I never looked like.

little packages.

My table piles high with items in small packages. Little oatmeal packs. Small shampoo. Teeny maple syrup containers and Bisquick in a pourable container. I keep small packets of toilet paper and wipes.

We like to camp. We have a wee little pop-up with a propane stove and a sink that leaks. A king size foam cushion, a double, and a table that folds down into a bed. We have a propane stove, and a sink that leaks if you fill it too high. We have a drawer filled with card games and backgammon, teas and non-perishable items.

I fantasize about homesteading, living on a large swath of land without plumbing. No one knows us there. I'm tired of all this civilization. A burbling stream runs through our land and the children stop wearing shoes. They run silently through the trees and high grasses, and deer don't notice them because they are woodland creatures. Sprites or fairies or gnomes. No one can find us. We are a family, working together, raising a house and growing vegetables and homeschooling and wearing long skirts.

We meet TracyOC's family at the campsite. My lone homesteading family turns into a commune. Maybe we can make it work. Maybe no one will annoy each other. Their skill set can complement ours. We sit quietly together, and I wonder if I could ever leave our creature comforts. I checked Facebook in the camper, uploaded a picture. It is terrible. Tracy and her husband actually know a thing or two about communes and living outdoors. I have a camper with a space heater, and I complain if it gets too cold and my husband seems too contented in the freezing temperatures.

POLAR BEAR! I accuse him. YOU ARE A POLAR BEAR! I AM A HUMMINGBIRD!

My wings are frozen in place. I am too small to fly here.

Grrrrrrr...

We like to camp. We hike over rocky terrain and I listen to TracyOC tell the kids about fearsome creatures like Splintercats who tear the treetops into deep spikes and Hugags, the kneeless creature who knocks over whole barns or trees, just for a respite from the endless standing. Beezus giggles. She has never heard of these creatures. She looks at me wondering if it is true. I nod and smile and wonder if it is true. In these woods, it looks true.

The girls skip on the rocky terrain. They are tough cookies until they aren't tough anymore. Then we are tough cookies, carrying gangling arms and long, stretching legs. They become wiggly creatures brought back to life our concession to carry forty plus pounds of girl. I imagine never coming back to New Jersey. Our house would become part of the environment, covered in moss and ivy no one was around to pluck from the flowerbeds.

Even in the woods, there is civilization everywhere. Large RVs with televisions. Bi-planes, and orienteering ranges. There are paved paths and boat launches. Yet still I crave the stillness of the woods, the endless stars, the rustling of other things moving besides us. I crave quiet in my head, but when we are out here hiking, I keep talking--about this about that about here about there.

I am a FAKE! My meditations are amidst plane noise and the garbage truck and grass cutting. You found out! They are suburban meditations! They come with a soundtrack! This place is so profane that any quiet seems sacred!

It helps the quiet to grumble about the noise. I fill the quiet again and again. As I warm myself against the fire, I feel the cramping in my belly. It tightens and releases. I wonder what next year will look like. Will there be another baby? Or will this little package in my uterus become a woodland creature too?

I am eleven weeks pregnant. Eleven weeks of being almost okay. I'm not nauseated or sick. I'm not frightened. I am just waiting for my belly to grow and a baby to move and a doctor to tell me she is okay, or she is not.

I haven't seen a doctor yet. It is why I am not frightened. I cannot control anything. Even if she dies now, there is nothing they can do. There is a kind of liberation in that thought. Next week, I meet our new midwife. Until then, I live on this stretch of land with wildflowers and feral children able to hunt and build barns for the neighbors miles away. I walk through the woods barefoot and pregnant collecting wildberries for our breakfast. I manage to handle the cold without electricity. The children talk like yearlings to the animals, clucking and yelping and howling into the night. When the children come home to me, wrapping themselves in my skirts, I hold them and feed them wild honey, blackberries, and root vegetables. After harvesting all morning, I tell them the baby is coming, and the children fetch the water from the spring down the meadow. They boil it for me, and my husband runs into town to tell the womenfolk. I do the hard work of finding a place to birth. I imagine birthing alone in the cabin we built. No heartbeat checks. No monitors. No blood pressure. No weight checks. No ultrasounds. The women stand around and wait, watching for too much blood. But mostly it is just me, knowing there could be a chance she dies and another chance that she lives. Just like in history when the chance of your baby living seemed fifty/fifty, just like it still does to all of us who lost children.

It seems irresponsible, even to me, but that seems perfect and magical right now. A place to not worry, a land of freedom from fear.

I don't know if this baby is a she, but I keep calling her a she. And because she is in there, I will be prodded and poked and let them draw blood every time they ask. In nine weeks, if she is still alive, they will tell me if she is a he or she really is a she. I will watch her in the monitor and cry. I will drink some sweet liquid and pee into a cup. I will go into the city and birth her. Horns will honk. Machines will beep and whirl and they will make sure every single moment that she is not dead.

I adore small things. Packages that tuck into corners. The baby is balled up in a tiny little package right now tied up with yarn. She fits in my belly, as big as a lime. So small, no one notices her. I carry her in my pocket. A little package of hope and fear that smells exactly like love.

whispers

They say to whisper if you want someone to hear you, but I scream. It comes out impulsively. Loudly. I cover my mouth. I am working on breathing first, taking a moment. Using a husky voice. There is no reason to not sound sexy when you are trying to get your point across.

You know this is true.  Practice this yourself by screaming, "Don't Fuck with Me!" Then whispering it like Kathleen Turner. In the former, you sound like a shrieking harpy. In the other, you sound like Batman.

This also works with "Knock it off, clowns."

They say to whisper if you want someone to listen. It is like a philosophy. The whisper approach. Screaming becomes the drone of loud. Nothing sinks in. It is just anger, and distance. With whispers, the person leans in close to your face, trying to hear. Your kids even stop what they are doing and come close.

You state your intent in a hushed but stern voice. You don't perform a soliloquy. You just state it.

Clean. Up. Your. Toys.

I used to be a screamer, throwing blame and wine glasses and God, I want to whisper. I want to be cool, lean glass of water, back against the wall. An unlit cigarette dangling from my lip. I am a Jet. Or a Shark. Or a greaser of undisclosed affiliation.

I am the opposite of aloof. I am loof. I am an emotive wild thing, moschate and feral. I lash out and turn in. I become desperate when someone leaves me, screaming their name, screaming apologies, screaming meaningless promises. I scream and whisper and stop crying when I am really hurt.

I can't find my footing always. I admit it. I am a changeable thing. A hippie and gypsy and punk rocker and scabby and a conservative astronaut's wife with a high bouffant hairdo and a secret lover on the other side of town. Attracted to the dark more than the light. I shoot out the light with a .45 then rally against gun control. I am a hypocrite.

I am none of those things, or all of them. There is a truth in both of those statements. There is a pathology in striving to be the best.  I am even the best when I am the worst. It is the extreme of arrogance. In my mind. I am the worst of the worst. The best worst person you know. But I am not a bad person at all. I am just a person.

One of my favorite lines in any book is Franny and Zoey, where Franny says, "I'm sick of not having the courage to be absolutely nobody."

I can only forgive someone after I forgive myself.  I realized this the other day when something turned for me. I only recently realized that I had been obsessing about a situation I could not control. Obsessing was a kind of control, another kind of addiction. In my happiest moments, when the kids were giggling and running and playing and my entire family sat together, I was thinking about something else. About failure and injustice and sentences never spoken, paths never taken. There was a healthy dose of self-pity in there.

I finally surrendered. I prayed for sleep the other night, as I do every night. I prayed to turn this situation over, to give it to God, or the universe, or to the little Brownies who fix my shoes in the middle of the night. I asked them to fix it. I asked to find a way to be of use to my family without this in my head. I asked to stop obsessing. I asked to find a resolution And I had a vivid dream. In it, I forgave myself for not being what I could not be.

I am sorry you failed, Angie. I am sorry someone doesn't like you. I am sorry that you couldn't do better. I am sorry you are going to have to live with that for the rest of your life. I am sorry.

My standards are impossibly high. I could have never met them. And right after forgiving myself, I forgave the other person. I met her in this dream, and said I won't ever understand, but I am done screaming in my head. I am done screaming at you, though you are not here. I am done.

I can only let go when I an fully defeated, when I surrender. There are paradoxes which have become truths for me. Surrendering means to put down the gun and never try to get it back. Don't look at it. Don't reach for it. Don't imagine it in your hands. You are ready to sit on a roadside and take direction. You are done fighting. You are following, looking at the tops of your shoes, waiting for the next direction.

It was a whispered atonement. Only audible to you.

+++

I haven't  known how to be in this body. I feel like I am being poured into it, still. Like the water of me remembers being in an athletic body. I look at my face, comfortable with the lines starting to form, the darkness under the eyes, but the second chin. I can't bear. This body is a strong thing. Angry. Carnal, and sweaty and hairy and begging for roughness, but I feel knit up in soft angora with padded shoulders, padded belly.

I have never worn pink. Well, once, I had a shirt that was dusty rose, but I looked naked and a man fell off a bike once thinking I had no shirt on. I hang our laundry on the line. The laundry is all black, except my husband's stuff, which is all grey. He says it is our family uniform. Grey t-shirt, broken in jeans. It is a whisper of an outfit, something someone wears so noone notices them.

It is unseasonably warm here, which is just as well with me. I love winter, but the humidity and wind chimes remind me of happier times, or the happiest times. I close my eyes and listen to the chimes, feel the breeze over me. I am warmed by that feeling of happiness.

I was so cold after she died, like the winter solstice took residence in my bones. I wore sweaters in August, bundled under blankets. I shivered. It was grief and thyroid, but mostly grief.

A few weeks ago, I was watching Oprah's channel, and this man, a famous movie director, was talking about happiness. He was incredibly wealthy. He bragged about his holdings, his material success, his servants, and estate caretakers. He bragged about his marble and large estate. It was never enough, and the headache of managing it all took up so much mental real estate, it hardly seemed like happiness. He sold his mansions and cars for a couple of modular homes, no bigger than my house. He gave his money away, I think. He did this after a biking accident. And he said something that I keep thinking about.

He said something like I have never been more happy than happy. When I was poor and happy, it was the same as being rich and happy. The happy was not greater or more fulfilling when I had money.

My happiness is different than my youthful happiness. My poverty-stricken happiness. It is different because I have the gratitude to stop in the moment and whisper a thank you, or appreciate the happiness. I thought my happiness was forever when I was 19. I was always going to be on this scale of happiness--somewhere between happy, but bored and happy. Then Lucy died, and happiness changed for me. Happiness seemed like one state that I didn't have directions to. Except now, I am happy.

I think this doesn't go the other way, though. Sadness has levels, degrees of suck. But happy is not more or less. It simply is.


+++


My father is out of the hospital, his infection is better. Thank you for all the prayers and thoughts. He is back to being a loving curmudgeon and leaver of obscure phone messages.


"Hello, Angie. It is Tom. I don't have my, uh, thing."


Tell me what you think about forgiveness and happiness and everything in between.