Wind takes pity on my battered soul and torn up legs, moves through the backyard, first caressing the chimes, then moving the mosquitos to the neighbor's backyard. It is night. The dog is patrolling the yard, scaring squirrels, chasing phantom cats to prolong outside. I don't mind. I look both ways, then I open my arms and close my eyes and see the moon as a photo negative behind my eyelids. It is so bright already. Strange in this place that steals organic light, sucking it into some suburban ambient dull orange aura that surrounds our town. A second full moon this month is the moon of intention. Deliberate abundance. It is the one of synchronicity. "Ask your spirit guides," I read on a blog. "Watch for signs. Open yourself to them. Make connections. Then act on them."
I feel the magic run through my body as I soak in the moon. I am not eaten alive by bugs. That should be enough magic for this long summer. I ask for nothing, rather I tell the universe what I have in my mind's eye. It is what the blog shaman says to do. Use affirmations.
I inspire my children.
I bring joy.
I am driven.
I know.
I awaken.
I am confident.
I am clear-headed.
I forgive.
I am healthy.
I am a source of light and love.
I am my higher self.
Then, I whisper the vain requests, I am thin. I am strong. I am beautiful.
I am run by the moon. I howl to energize and turn inward, my cycles match up to the moon, perhaps like all women. But I don't know what to do with the power I harness from the night sky. I squander it on resentments and dream work that I am too lazy to write down and deconstruct.
I like the Native American names for the moon. August is the Sturgeon Moon which makes me happy for the fish (don't forget the fish.), and yet the blue moon, the second one this month, takes the name of the first, like a shadow self. Amore radiant, special, important shadow self. Last full moon, I was packing for our trip, and praying and I forgot about the moon all together. I felt disconnected from the space outside my house. Heat and mosquitos kept us inside in July, bouncing on furniture, wrestling until someone cries. I am trying to let go of my shadow self, or rather maybe I am trying to make her more radiant, special, and important, like some kind of blue moon goddess. Can that be the shadow self I don't discuss in proper company? The one that is luminous, forgiving, pious, full of God and light, as opposed to the angry, resentful Angie? I realized a few weeks ago, that I hadn't thought about my righteous indignation in a week or more. I scratched my head and thought, Yeah, but I can fire that up if I want. Maybe that means I am still damaged.
But I don't want. It is exhausting to let it go string by string of the cord that binds me to curses, abuse, and neglectful spirits. After more than a year, finally, I feel almost free of the cord that bound my heart and prevented me from letting women get close and know me. It occurs to me that I have already set my intention this year. I want to allow another woman into my life as a close friend, someone to confide, share, open up to and who I can do the same. I miss that in real life. Perhaps it is a friend of my daughter, or the pagan yoga instructor, or the psychics who ask me to join their group. I am asking the universe for a friend in my town, someone who makes me laugh and brings out that part of me, someone who likes far-out gypsy topics and oracle cards, art and crafts, and remembers that women need each other. Someone I can listen to for hours, someone who I trust.
I signed up for this two-month project called the Magical Sabbatical. It was everything I wanted to accomplish, and it felt divinely given that I even found it. It follows the full moon cycles, starting this blue moon, and ending on the full moon of October. It contains lectures and affirmations, rituals and intentions. The website says it is "an intentional disruption in your status quo." I am open to opening. I am open to the shadow self, the luminous goddess that she can be, if I only let her.
What are your intentions this blue moon? What are you accomplishing spiritually, emotionally? Share with me.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
shy
He hides himself in the folds of my yoga pants and whimpers.
There are people, Mama. People.
He doesn't say it, but I know what he is thinking. He is afraid of humans, my little Thor. I give him a hammer and a lightning bolt, but he still cowers. At the playground, he holds my hand and watches, and I push him gently toward a manageable slide. "Go play, my angel. Go play." And he shakes his head and reaches up.
No, Mama. No. No.
I take him in my arms, and stand on the sidelines watching the other children play. Watching Beezus slide down the fireman's pole, and talk to other children, and try the monkey bars. He still struggles with the talk. I hear him try sentences on for size, rolling around in his mouth. Aspirating after each word. I want to encourage him, but I don't understand what he is saying. He repeats the phrase again. Then out of the blue, he will perfectly pronounce 'garbage truck.' Most often, he won't speak at all. People ask him, "What's your name?" Or "Why aren't you talking?" Or "Don't tell me you're shy."
I smile and answer for him. I tell people that he is in speech therapy, so they know we are working on this, and I spell the word S-H-Y. They seem to want answers for the reason that he is the size of a four year old, but doesn't speak yet. They look at Beezus and say that his sister is probably speaking for him, and I nod and laugh, and all the while, I think that Thor knows exactly what we are saying and is living his fate.
The speech therapist wonders if he is lacking confidence, since he seems to whisper the right answer and then not repeat it aloud. She mentions selective mutism. She says he is probably the brightest child she works with. He follows complicated, even unexpected directions. He's smart and patient and lovely, she says. Almost much too patient and smart for a child his age. He's like the opposite of hyperactive.
Hypoactive? I think.
I wonder if shy is a bad trait or a good one. I felt emboldened recently at the spate of articles and books talking about shyness being a good trait. We are a family of shy. And shy is something everyone thinks you need to get over to be successful. It seems good to me to talk when you feel moved to talk, instead of filling empty space with noise. Thor sits in meditation. He giggles incessantly, and plays with his sister like he is four. Later, I look up selective mutism. Social Anxiety Disorder pops up. Shyness. Psychiatrist. Special classes. Therapy.
The nights have grown more pleasant. Almost cool, and I open the door to my studio. The wind chimes ring. The mosquitoes smell the warmth and buzz around me as I read about all the things I should be doing with Thor. He is two and I am reading about SSRIs. It feels so wrong. I caused this with my anxiety during his pregnancy, the thought immediately pops into my head. I've been waiting to find out how I messed up Thor, and here it is. I am convinced of it. It covers me like a wet, scratchy blanket. I can't escape it. It is heavy and uncomfortable and larger than our house. I will never escape accusation and blame. I am the causer of psychiatric disorders! He is too attached! BAD MOTHER! BAD! And as I start that line of thinking, I stop. I take in a long, cleansing breath, and let that abuse float out my studio door with the mosquitoes. It doesn't help me parent him better to believe it is my fault.
My baby Thor is sweet and lovely. He needs to sleep with his feet over someone, like he is the King of Siam. He wants to be fanned and fed grapes and he likes to dance to music about the moon and goddesses. He likes to grab my face in both his hands, and stare into my eyes and then kiss me on the mouth. He is quiet and shy and afraid sometimes and I realize I have been approaching him all wrong. There is nothing wrong with him. Instead of losing patience, I need to reassure him that shyness can be a successful way of being. I need to stop making excuses or explaining all this. I want him comfortable so others can see the loving, confident, creative, amazing child I am privileged to mother everyday. What I created is a child who trusts me, who practices discernment in social situations, and fears strangers asking what is wrong with him. I understand where he is coming from.
Let people wonder, ask, gawk. Let them call me controlling, or too attached. Let them think I am a bad mother. I can handle that. What Thor needs is to know nothing is expected of him but his security. All he needs to do is feel safe, and then nature will do the rest. So my job now is not to get him to talk, but to get him to relax.
Find it in my skirts, my son. Find it on my lap. Then grow strong. Grab your hammer. Change the world.
There are people, Mama. People.
He doesn't say it, but I know what he is thinking. He is afraid of humans, my little Thor. I give him a hammer and a lightning bolt, but he still cowers. At the playground, he holds my hand and watches, and I push him gently toward a manageable slide. "Go play, my angel. Go play." And he shakes his head and reaches up.
No, Mama. No. No.
I take him in my arms, and stand on the sidelines watching the other children play. Watching Beezus slide down the fireman's pole, and talk to other children, and try the monkey bars. He still struggles with the talk. I hear him try sentences on for size, rolling around in his mouth. Aspirating after each word. I want to encourage him, but I don't understand what he is saying. He repeats the phrase again. Then out of the blue, he will perfectly pronounce 'garbage truck.' Most often, he won't speak at all. People ask him, "What's your name?" Or "Why aren't you talking?" Or "Don't tell me you're shy."
I smile and answer for him. I tell people that he is in speech therapy, so they know we are working on this, and I spell the word S-H-Y. They seem to want answers for the reason that he is the size of a four year old, but doesn't speak yet. They look at Beezus and say that his sister is probably speaking for him, and I nod and laugh, and all the while, I think that Thor knows exactly what we are saying and is living his fate.
The speech therapist wonders if he is lacking confidence, since he seems to whisper the right answer and then not repeat it aloud. She mentions selective mutism. She says he is probably the brightest child she works with. He follows complicated, even unexpected directions. He's smart and patient and lovely, she says. Almost much too patient and smart for a child his age. He's like the opposite of hyperactive.
Hypoactive? I think.
I wonder if shy is a bad trait or a good one. I felt emboldened recently at the spate of articles and books talking about shyness being a good trait. We are a family of shy. And shy is something everyone thinks you need to get over to be successful. It seems good to me to talk when you feel moved to talk, instead of filling empty space with noise. Thor sits in meditation. He giggles incessantly, and plays with his sister like he is four. Later, I look up selective mutism. Social Anxiety Disorder pops up. Shyness. Psychiatrist. Special classes. Therapy.
The nights have grown more pleasant. Almost cool, and I open the door to my studio. The wind chimes ring. The mosquitoes smell the warmth and buzz around me as I read about all the things I should be doing with Thor. He is two and I am reading about SSRIs. It feels so wrong. I caused this with my anxiety during his pregnancy, the thought immediately pops into my head. I've been waiting to find out how I messed up Thor, and here it is. I am convinced of it. It covers me like a wet, scratchy blanket. I can't escape it. It is heavy and uncomfortable and larger than our house. I will never escape accusation and blame. I am the causer of psychiatric disorders! He is too attached! BAD MOTHER! BAD! And as I start that line of thinking, I stop. I take in a long, cleansing breath, and let that abuse float out my studio door with the mosquitoes. It doesn't help me parent him better to believe it is my fault.
My baby Thor is sweet and lovely. He needs to sleep with his feet over someone, like he is the King of Siam. He wants to be fanned and fed grapes and he likes to dance to music about the moon and goddesses. He likes to grab my face in both his hands, and stare into my eyes and then kiss me on the mouth. He is quiet and shy and afraid sometimes and I realize I have been approaching him all wrong. There is nothing wrong with him. Instead of losing patience, I need to reassure him that shyness can be a successful way of being. I need to stop making excuses or explaining all this. I want him comfortable so others can see the loving, confident, creative, amazing child I am privileged to mother everyday. What I created is a child who trusts me, who practices discernment in social situations, and fears strangers asking what is wrong with him. I understand where he is coming from.
Let people wonder, ask, gawk. Let them call me controlling, or too attached. Let them think I am a bad mother. I can handle that. What Thor needs is to know nothing is expected of him but his security. All he needs to do is feel safe, and then nature will do the rest. So my job now is not to get him to talk, but to get him to relax.
Find it in my skirts, my son. Find it on my lap. Then grow strong. Grab your hammer. Change the world.
Monday, August 13, 2012
forgiveness and remembrance
The shop smells of Japanese incense. There are chakra crystals and handblocked fabric bags made in Tibet by a women's collective. There are angels in resin for a buck, magical rocks, and pyramids, and in the middle of lavender eye pillows, I see a smiling praying jizo statue for their garden. A big jizo. It is reasonably priced, and I imagine the red bib I will sew for him. He looks like one of my paintings. I ask the beautiful woman with long flowing scarves in August, and almost no shoes about the statues around her shop. There are jizos all around this place. I ask her if she has more. I want to see them all, and she leads me around the shop, showing me Buddhas, and jizos, and Hoteis. And the first jizo is the best. He is mine.
As we stop, I reach for him, turning up to heaven, hands in prayer position, smiling. The clerk touches my wrist where her name is written on my body. It is a sensual gesture, one of compassion. The touch of a stranger feels electric. Her finger rests on my pulse. It quickens.
What does that say?
Lucia.
Is that your name?
No, it is my daughter's name.
It's beautiful. How old is she?
Actually, she died.
How old was she when she passed?
At birth. She was just being born.
Our eyes meet. It is kind of true, I am trying to communicate. No, it is true. She didn't have an age. She would have been born soon. She died just before she was born, but she was still a baby. Stillborn sounds like miscarriage to strangers. And miscarriage is also difficult and physical and hard and not to be dismissed, if you don't want it dismissed, but those words, stillbirth, miscarriage, pregnancy loss open dismissal and distance from the fact that I gave birth to my six pound baby. Lucia looked like me, and I had to leave her in the hospital for an autopsy, then cremation. So, I said she died at birth. It's not a lie, really. What I really want to say is that I pushed her out of my vagina. She was limp and gray, and weighed more than my neighbor's living baby. Her eyes were bruised and the skin torn. I kissed her anyway, and had to push her little tongue back in her mouth so she would look more alive, because it was hard to see her dead. After I held her for a few hours, she grew cold. I couldn't bear it. I wanted more blankets to cover her, to warm her.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
Do you have other children?
Yes. A two year old and a five year old. But Lucia is why I want the jizo, because jizos protect babies that die, and guide them into the next life. I paint them. Constantly paint them.
Wow, really?
Yes. I paint them for other people all over the world and for myself. It is a ritual of forgiveness and remembrance.
She stared at me, tears welling. And then she hugged me. The clerk in the metaphysical store in a cluster of other stores held me. She said there was a light in me. And I could feel the darkness bubbling under the light. The dark is so overwhelming, I want to tell her, that all you can do is light stuff or it would consume us all. Even you, even your light, gauzey fabrics.
I kneel in front of the jizo I placed under her tree, next to the stepping stones we made for our two babies.
I'm sorry you died in me,I say.
There is no answer.
I'm sorry you died in me, I say again.
I chose to die like that, Mama.
You did?
You chose it too.
I'm sorry.
Don't apologize to me, Mama. I had a good life.
I light another stick of incense and jam it into the ground.
I'm sorry your baby died in you, Angie.
It's not okay, Angie. I'm not sure I forgive you.
I know, Angie.
But keep apologizing, Ang, I think it might be working.
I perform a ritual of forgiveness. It involves nothing selfless. It is all about me being forgiven. It is empty and dark and sad, and as I walk through it, I am come out the other side full and light and contented.
I think about the life I made out of her death. It involves writing and painting and going to metaphysical stores and letting go. I let go of friends. I let go of expectation. I let go of the future. I let go of my tears. I let go of naiveté. I let go of my baby. I let go of the darkness to embrace something dark in me. I let go of anger. I let go.
+++
Today, I was over at Glow in the Woods writing about this thing that happened to me a few years ago. It was something I never talked about, or if I did, only privately to Jess or my husband, I think. I was embarrassed about it, actually, which sounds weird considering the emo shit I have owned on this blog, but still, you know, there once was a girl on the train and I loved her for a few minutes.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
kindness
My friend Jess wrote these lines over three years ago:
I’ve spent a year re-telling the same sad story. It’s so short too. How many ways can I write ‘My baby died, I never knew her, I wish I did.'
I think about those lines often, when I write, when I talk of her...Lucia died. I never knew her, I wish I did. It's true, you know. That is what all my work boils down to. Jess has a gift for cutting through the bullshit and writing the line that sums it all up.
I never knew her, I wish I did. So instead of not-knowing her and wishing I did, I write and paint and do other yummy, delicious stuff. I wear raven feathers and dance barefoot in my studio to pagan music. I meditate in suffering until it fills my chest. I breathe it in like unwelcome water. Searing pain and dull ache and the feeling of death. My lungs burst, a flood pocked with drowned moths and buzzards erupts from the hole left behind. I light wooden-wicked candles that smell of campfires and crackle like a language. I eat hundreds of life savers, but I am still lost.
There are people all over the world whose babies just died. They feel completely alone, like I did. I remember. I remember thinking, "I will always be that woman whose baby died." Because it used to matter to me which woman I was. I told a friend that, and she thought I was lying. Who would think that? It sounds like literary license, but it isn't. It is what went through my head. This will define me. I knew that this thing that just happened--being told my baby was dead in me--rewired my pathway. That I would have to tell this story over and over again just to make sense of it.
I bemoaned and wailed and called and keened and prayed and clucked and sighed. And then I conjured a community. They were conjuring me. Leaning over cauldrons. Adding eye of nice and aroma of clever. Chanting, "Let these people be babylost and not overly angel-y and maybe a little punk rock too. Let them be artists and magicians and conjurers. Buddhists and pagans and Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians. And full of compassion and patience and support."
I’ve spent a year re-telling the same sad story. It’s so short too. How many ways can I write ‘My baby died, I never knew her, I wish I did.'
I think about those lines often, when I write, when I talk of her...Lucia died. I never knew her, I wish I did. It's true, you know. That is what all my work boils down to. Jess has a gift for cutting through the bullshit and writing the line that sums it all up.
I never knew her, I wish I did. So instead of not-knowing her and wishing I did, I write and paint and do other yummy, delicious stuff. I wear raven feathers and dance barefoot in my studio to pagan music. I meditate in suffering until it fills my chest. I breathe it in like unwelcome water. Searing pain and dull ache and the feeling of death. My lungs burst, a flood pocked with drowned moths and buzzards erupts from the hole left behind. I light wooden-wicked candles that smell of campfires and crackle like a language. I eat hundreds of life savers, but I am still lost.
There are people all over the world whose babies just died. They feel completely alone, like I did. I remember. I remember thinking, "I will always be that woman whose baby died." Because it used to matter to me which woman I was. I told a friend that, and she thought I was lying. Who would think that? It sounds like literary license, but it isn't. It is what went through my head. This will define me. I knew that this thing that just happened--being told my baby was dead in me--rewired my pathway. That I would have to tell this story over and over again just to make sense of it.
I bemoaned and wailed and called and keened and prayed and clucked and sighed. And then I conjured a community. They were conjuring me. Leaning over cauldrons. Adding eye of nice and aroma of clever. Chanting, "Let these people be babylost and not overly angel-y and maybe a little punk rock too. Let them be artists and magicians and conjurers. Buddhists and pagans and Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians. And full of compassion and patience and support."
There is a community of people whose babies died. Sometimes I write here for them. Sometimes I write here for me. But I am here. Over and over again. I have asked myself if it is healthy. If it is okay. If it is weird. I asked psychics too and tarot readers and mediums and women that talk to angels. I asked them if it is healthy, but in me I know that I have to give back to this community who saved my life. I know that I need to keep writing here, painting here, talking about grief and daughter-death. I counted on someone three years out, ten years out, seven years out to tell me that what I was feeling was normal and that I was going to be okay. Not back to the way it was before, but something better even. Those people showed me a way to integrate this storyline into my life. Jess happened to write about this today at Glow. Even though I was writing a little bit about it too over here a quarter of the world away. I take writing about Lucia and telling this sad story seriously, because my story has changed. I can say with confidence and love that my daughter Lucia gave me the most amazing gifts. She taught me so many truths, so much beauty, so much compassion. She taught me about my weaknesses and strengths, and I have allowed her death to become the way to connect to thousands of people, because at first, I only allowed her death to cut me off from everyone.
We all grieve. If we don't now, we will one day. If you can find nothing to like about someone, nothing to feel empathetic about, use that as a starting point to grow compassion. Every person has lost someone. Every person will lose someone. Every person will be someone's grief.
Last Friday was the MISS Foundation's International Kindness Day project. For it, I offered to paint mizuko jizo for parents, friends, family, anyone who wanted one. I meant to do it in silence, but after an hour and a half of sitting through the massive tonglen session, then one painting group, it felt too isolating. Plus, the kids popped in, and I talked without thinking. I am human, and besides, it is enough to do thirty-five paintings. I wanted to listen to my music, the rain, sing, dance. I need to also be kind to me. Here is a video I made after Kindness Day. It explains about me and why I do this.
We all grieve. If we don't now, we will one day. If you can find nothing to like about someone, nothing to feel empathetic about, use that as a starting point to grow compassion. Every person has lost someone. Every person will lose someone. Every person will be someone's grief.
Last Friday was the MISS Foundation's International Kindness Day project. For it, I offered to paint mizuko jizo for parents, friends, family, anyone who wanted one. I meant to do it in silence, but after an hour and a half of sitting through the massive tonglen session, then one painting group, it felt too isolating. Plus, the kids popped in, and I talked without thinking. I am human, and besides, it is enough to do thirty-five paintings. I wanted to listen to my music, the rain, sing, dance. I need to also be kind to me. Here is a video I made after Kindness Day. It explains about me and why I do this.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
kindness day
The yoga was amazing in its ordinariness. I didn't cry. I didn't fall on the floor in a puddle, or talk about Lucia incessantly, or lash out in anger at all of yoginis. I just took the effin' class and it was lovely. It was very gentle, so I also felt fit enough for it, which was a bonus. The instructor never said the word grief, which felt odd for a class with the title Grief and Healing through Yoga, but you know, I liked what she had to say. She said we live in the negative programming of the story line. If we can be curious and feel it, it will change the grief. I liked that. It reminded me of that discussion on self-compassion I heard a few months ago.
She said the word heal and I didn't cringe or grow hot with anger. Heal. It feels okay to sit cross-legged with the concept of healing. I went back to another class on Wednesday. I didn't want to break the momentum and it was lovely. Grateful to this community for the love and support, and just the general acceptance at anything that troubles us. You are just there abiding, supporting, encouraging. Thank you.
Tomorrow is the MISS Foundation's Kindness Project Day. The idea of the day is to do something kind for someone in your baby's name as a way to carry his or her legacy. (Go visit the website to print out cards to leave at the scene of the kindness, and also RSVP on Facebook, if you can. These kindnesses are beautiful to read about.) Last year, I painted 4" x 6" mizuko jizo altar paintings for anyone who asked for one.
I think I did about 28. I am doing that again this year. You can comment on this post to request one, or on my Etsy shop's FB page (you can just become a fan), or on my personal FB page, or just shoot me an email at uberangie(at)gmail(dot)com. Just make sure you say something like, "I would like a painting in honor of my baby."* If you leave the baby's name, I am doing a crystal blessing grid in honor of all the babies I am painting for this year. Kicking off the day with a ritual in honor of grieving parents, then a tonglen meditation during which I will paint in silent meditation. I am also cutting off all email, phone and technology for the day. I am going to try to do a day of silent meditation and fasting this year. This is an exercise I have never tried and I am going to be in my house, so with babies and husband, it might not succeed. I think it is important, though. I will be painting on Saturday, July 28, in case you are trying to reach me, or trying to play Draw Something.
I have an idea of how many paintings I can handle, so I might close down these comments if it is too overwhelming. But for now, you can request one. You also need to send me your address, obviously, if I do not have it already.
Here is the listing for a mizuko jizo painting from my Etsy site. I usually sell them for $25/painting, so I am including shipping, and a description of mizuko jizo. The first time I wrote about mizuko jizo was 2009 when I began painting them as part of my daily remembrance ritual for Lucia. It now comes up on the third listing for mizuko jizo on Google. That is amazing to me. I connected with so many women and men with my mizuko kuyo. It is humbling and amazing. I know that this life I live now, surrounded by meditation and healing is the life I was meant to live. Beyond giving me a place to direct my grief energy, painting mizuko jizo has become a way for me to honor all the suffering in this community and all the babies I now mourn.
I will probably write a bunch of overwrought posts about my experience, but until then, much love to you all. xo
*If you have one, you can still request another. Just know that.
She said the word heal and I didn't cringe or grow hot with anger. Heal. It feels okay to sit cross-legged with the concept of healing. I went back to another class on Wednesday. I didn't want to break the momentum and it was lovely. Grateful to this community for the love and support, and just the general acceptance at anything that troubles us. You are just there abiding, supporting, encouraging. Thank you.
Tomorrow is the MISS Foundation's Kindness Project Day. The idea of the day is to do something kind for someone in your baby's name as a way to carry his or her legacy. (Go visit the website to print out cards to leave at the scene of the kindness, and also RSVP on Facebook, if you can. These kindnesses are beautiful to read about.) Last year, I painted 4" x 6" mizuko jizo altar paintings for anyone who asked for one.
I think I did about 28. I am doing that again this year. You can comment on this post to request one, or on my Etsy shop's FB page (you can just become a fan), or on my personal FB page, or just shoot me an email at uberangie(at)gmail(dot)com. Just make sure you say something like, "I would like a painting in honor of my baby."* If you leave the baby's name, I am doing a crystal blessing grid in honor of all the babies I am painting for this year. Kicking off the day with a ritual in honor of grieving parents, then a tonglen meditation during which I will paint in silent meditation. I am also cutting off all email, phone and technology for the day. I am going to try to do a day of silent meditation and fasting this year. This is an exercise I have never tried and I am going to be in my house, so with babies and husband, it might not succeed. I think it is important, though. I will be painting on Saturday, July 28, in case you are trying to reach me, or trying to play Draw Something.
I have an idea of how many paintings I can handle, so I might close down these comments if it is too overwhelming. But for now, you can request one. You also need to send me your address, obviously, if I do not have it already.
Here is the listing for a mizuko jizo painting from my Etsy site. I usually sell them for $25/painting, so I am including shipping, and a description of mizuko jizo. The first time I wrote about mizuko jizo was 2009 when I began painting them as part of my daily remembrance ritual for Lucia. It now comes up on the third listing for mizuko jizo on Google. That is amazing to me. I connected with so many women and men with my mizuko kuyo. It is humbling and amazing. I know that this life I live now, surrounded by meditation and healing is the life I was meant to live. Beyond giving me a place to direct my grief energy, painting mizuko jizo has become a way for me to honor all the suffering in this community and all the babies I now mourn.
I will probably write a bunch of overwrought posts about my experience, but until then, much love to you all. xo
*If you have one, you can still request another. Just know that.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
grief yoga
I don't think you understand how much you can hate your body until a child dies inside of it. I thought I understood self-loathing and cellulite-focused anger in my twenties. Then she died, and everything I thought I had come to accept about this body was destroyed with her. Burned in a fire. I raise my four arms like Kali. One holds my daughter. One holds my body. One holds peace. One holds forgiveness, and I turn them into the flames. I didn't get the ashes from that one. I didn't want them. They were a dark energy.
It is strange for me, someone once so aware of her body. I used to love these knotty old muscles, lifting babies over my head, challenging my body further than I thought possible, throwing softballs, and tumbling across my college green after a few drinks. I felt betrayed by this mass of cells. I held nothing like who I felt inside anymore. The betrayal kept coming. She died. I developed thyroid disease. It caused depression and anxiety. I had a hard pregnancy with Thor. Addiction. Miscarriage. Biopsies. Aches. Pains. Extra weight that won't come off with liquid diets and bike riding, and I stopped thinking of myself as strong, but someone diseased and frumpy. The goddess of destruction, my cells like little blue goddesses, tongues extended. "You are old, Mama," they taunt. "You are nothing like the athlete, mother, friends, lover, citizen, yogi you once thought. You are just black energy."
My last yoga class was a prenatal class with Lucia in my belly. I felt amazing doing yoga pregnant. And it was our time--Lulu and Mama's time. I talked to her as I rode my bike there. I said prayers to her. I saw her--gypsy curls of black and barefeet. She runs like a fairy through the backyard and wears long skirts and I tuck her into my arm and kiss her. This is what I saw when I stretched and meditated and lied in shavasana. I felt grounded and earthy. I felt beautiful. Truly beautiful. I was about to lose all of that, and had no idea. I would have grasped onto the grass, dug my toes into the soil and sprouted roots. I would have kept swaying, back and forth, in the wind. My grief might have sat less in anger and more in forgiveness if I stayed with yoga. If I could have been more of something that ineffable spiritual quality that I wanted yoga to be. But I couldn't.
I had bought it all. The balance and love and surrounded by golden light. I bought the yoga environment and the teachers acting like gurus and mentors and people interested in my pregnancy and baby. I believed they had a piece of wisdom that I wanted. And then she died, and the teacher and my prenatal massage therapist said nothing. No sorries. No condolences. And then I confronted them, they said what everyone else said, "I didn't know what to say. I wanted to give you the space to grieve." It was like seeing the man behind in the curtain in Oz.
Why, these are just normal people!
It seemed so impossible. I felt so angry against this hypocritical institution of yoga. One that spoke in words that sounded like spirituality and acceptance, but couldn't face the possibility that babies died, and that mine died. And that love and wholeness I felt about yoga died with her. I resented yoga and all those lithe bodies that stretched and bowed in namaste. I read once that namaste means "I honor the sacred in you." Death was in me. I felt dishonored by that silence, as though no one was bowing to me anymore. Death is the most sacred of acts. We all do it. We don't know where or when. We don't know how, but we will die. It connects us to all the worlds. And yet I felt shunned by yoga. It was a self-shunning. I exiled myself out of the new age community, because I couldn't see myself fitting anywhere other than a cautionary tale.
There is a local yoga studio where Beezus is taking little kid yoga now. It is lovely. It is not the same place I went to practice with Lucia, so maybe it feels different because of that. I keep thinking that I will go back to yoga. Every year I think I have come to a place of acceptance and readiness to face that first class and then it seems too much. I'm too fat, I think. Too damaged.
I am fairly positive that I will cry through my first yoga class, remembering her, honoring her and our connection there. It has been a long time since I cried. And it has been three plus years now since I practiced yoga in a studio. I have been using these two unaware people as an excuse. I have forgiven them. I have forgiven myself for reacting so judgmentally towards them. Just because you practice something beautiful, or strive for that balance, doesn't mean you achieve that in every moment of every day. And we aren't even supposed to be holy every moment of every day. We strive for grace, and forgive ourselves for not coming close to it.
Forgiveness is not something I do easily. Forgiveness has been a journey for me, not a suddenly landing. These women are just people. Young people. I might have been the first grieving mother they encountered, I don't know. Clearly, they had no idea what to say when something so foreign to their world experience happened. They meant well, I know now. They just didn't know. I'm not sure anyone quite knows how much a condolence means unless you have lost someone close. Three simple words--I am sorry. It means the world. It is an acknowledgement that she lived and I lost. I forgive myself for lashing out at them, because I did end up lashing out at both of them. It was not my best self either. I blamed them for a long time for destroying my love of yoga. I blamed them. My response was much worse than their action, I think now. But I still forgive myself for that, even as a cringe at my grief. I was Kali, goddess of destruction. I destroyed everything I cared about after she died. And it didn't bring her back.
Anyway, this yoga studio is having a workshop today and next week called Grief and Yoga, and it is a way to release grief through movement. I already paid for the class so I feel obligated to go. I want to go. I am ready to move past this. I am ready to have my body back, reclaim it from the dead. I thought maybe this would be a good way to cry through a class. To come to a place of peace with yoga. Combining the thing that took me out with the thing I once loved. Facing that fear, though, maybe that is the most important thing to do right now. My old body needs the truce. And so does my soul.
It is strange for me, someone once so aware of her body. I used to love these knotty old muscles, lifting babies over my head, challenging my body further than I thought possible, throwing softballs, and tumbling across my college green after a few drinks. I felt betrayed by this mass of cells. I held nothing like who I felt inside anymore. The betrayal kept coming. She died. I developed thyroid disease. It caused depression and anxiety. I had a hard pregnancy with Thor. Addiction. Miscarriage. Biopsies. Aches. Pains. Extra weight that won't come off with liquid diets and bike riding, and I stopped thinking of myself as strong, but someone diseased and frumpy. The goddess of destruction, my cells like little blue goddesses, tongues extended. "You are old, Mama," they taunt. "You are nothing like the athlete, mother, friends, lover, citizen, yogi you once thought. You are just black energy."
My last yoga class was a prenatal class with Lucia in my belly. I felt amazing doing yoga pregnant. And it was our time--Lulu and Mama's time. I talked to her as I rode my bike there. I said prayers to her. I saw her--gypsy curls of black and barefeet. She runs like a fairy through the backyard and wears long skirts and I tuck her into my arm and kiss her. This is what I saw when I stretched and meditated and lied in shavasana. I felt grounded and earthy. I felt beautiful. Truly beautiful. I was about to lose all of that, and had no idea. I would have grasped onto the grass, dug my toes into the soil and sprouted roots. I would have kept swaying, back and forth, in the wind. My grief might have sat less in anger and more in forgiveness if I stayed with yoga. If I could have been more of something that ineffable spiritual quality that I wanted yoga to be. But I couldn't.
I had bought it all. The balance and love and surrounded by golden light. I bought the yoga environment and the teachers acting like gurus and mentors and people interested in my pregnancy and baby. I believed they had a piece of wisdom that I wanted. And then she died, and the teacher and my prenatal massage therapist said nothing. No sorries. No condolences. And then I confronted them, they said what everyone else said, "I didn't know what to say. I wanted to give you the space to grieve." It was like seeing the man behind in the curtain in Oz.
Why, these are just normal people!
It seemed so impossible. I felt so angry against this hypocritical institution of yoga. One that spoke in words that sounded like spirituality and acceptance, but couldn't face the possibility that babies died, and that mine died. And that love and wholeness I felt about yoga died with her. I resented yoga and all those lithe bodies that stretched and bowed in namaste. I read once that namaste means "I honor the sacred in you." Death was in me. I felt dishonored by that silence, as though no one was bowing to me anymore. Death is the most sacred of acts. We all do it. We don't know where or when. We don't know how, but we will die. It connects us to all the worlds. And yet I felt shunned by yoga. It was a self-shunning. I exiled myself out of the new age community, because I couldn't see myself fitting anywhere other than a cautionary tale.
There is a local yoga studio where Beezus is taking little kid yoga now. It is lovely. It is not the same place I went to practice with Lucia, so maybe it feels different because of that. I keep thinking that I will go back to yoga. Every year I think I have come to a place of acceptance and readiness to face that first class and then it seems too much. I'm too fat, I think. Too damaged.
I am fairly positive that I will cry through my first yoga class, remembering her, honoring her and our connection there. It has been a long time since I cried. And it has been three plus years now since I practiced yoga in a studio. I have been using these two unaware people as an excuse. I have forgiven them. I have forgiven myself for reacting so judgmentally towards them. Just because you practice something beautiful, or strive for that balance, doesn't mean you achieve that in every moment of every day. And we aren't even supposed to be holy every moment of every day. We strive for grace, and forgive ourselves for not coming close to it.
Forgiveness is not something I do easily. Forgiveness has been a journey for me, not a suddenly landing. These women are just people. Young people. I might have been the first grieving mother they encountered, I don't know. Clearly, they had no idea what to say when something so foreign to their world experience happened. They meant well, I know now. They just didn't know. I'm not sure anyone quite knows how much a condolence means unless you have lost someone close. Three simple words--I am sorry. It means the world. It is an acknowledgement that she lived and I lost. I forgive myself for lashing out at them, because I did end up lashing out at both of them. It was not my best self either. I blamed them for a long time for destroying my love of yoga. I blamed them. My response was much worse than their action, I think now. But I still forgive myself for that, even as a cringe at my grief. I was Kali, goddess of destruction. I destroyed everything I cared about after she died. And it didn't bring her back.
Anyway, this yoga studio is having a workshop today and next week called Grief and Yoga, and it is a way to release grief through movement. I already paid for the class so I feel obligated to go. I want to go. I am ready to move past this. I am ready to have my body back, reclaim it from the dead. I thought maybe this would be a good way to cry through a class. To come to a place of peace with yoga. Combining the thing that took me out with the thing I once loved. Facing that fear, though, maybe that is the most important thing to do right now. My old body needs the truce. And so does my soul.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
amazing grace
Having a two year old is exhausting and wonderful. It is sad to admit that I have almost no recollection of Beatrice's two. I was four months into grief when we celebrated two with sushi and pizzi. I remember delighting in her, asking her how she lived so easily. I remember cuddling with her for hours, watching movies. I remember painting with her. I remember having long conversations with her, and reading her long, intricate folktales of Inuit peoples and Mexican Indians.
I have no recollection if she was interested in using the potty. I don't remember how many words she had, or if her molars came in (they must have, they are here.) I don't know when she said "I love you" for the first time, or if she sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star as much as Thor does. I missed Lucia and appreciated Beezus with every ounce of me, but I couldn't commit either of them to memory. They were like sand. Every moment gone before it came.
Thor is severely speech delayed. I had no idea he was delayed, because I had no idea what to expect. I don't remember how many words Beezus had. I only realized because when I hung out with other two year olds, he didn't speak and they did.
He is slowly learning words, and talking. The speech therapist tells me that he is incredibly smart, above or at all his milestones, perhaps just a little lazy with his mouth movements. He'd rather say every word with a D. It is a very common speech delay for little bros. He gets so excited when his teacher is coming over, and he sits in front of her playing games with her. I hear him say Chicken perfectly. Pig. Cow. Boy. He raises his hand like he is in school, even though she is always calling on him and he is the only one answering. I like his teacher, she is kind and smiles at his little flirts and idiosyncrasies.
I feel like we are just starting summer. Guests and trips, then appointments and dentists and biopsies and food shopping and maybe we will never sit still again, wondering what to do. I think about making a schedule for us, but with what time? Every day is another appointment. Beezus keeps asking me, "Do you have my schedule yet?" She is a child run by routine. I am a mother run by routine, but I still can't construct anything schedule-y.
The yard is dry and our tomatoes seem to have some strange scorched disease. This summer has been brutal, and we spend more time inside than out right now. I hung my spider plant on the deck with my wind chimes that play the first notes of Amazing Grace. When the wind blows, it sometimes sounds like a song I once heard, and other times, divinely, I hear the beginning of Amazing Grace. Just a few notes, but like a prayer I whisper the words.
Amazing Grace.
How sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now, I'm found.
I still feel lost some days. The psychic told me that someone cursed me, and I feel like that was the curse. Wandering the halls of my brain, slamming doors and blowing out candles, haunting myself, pushing my own hand up to drop the groceries I just bought. Someone tells me to lay my necklaces and crystals outside to soak up the sun and the moon energy, and they will shine brighter. Protect me more. I keep buying protection jewelry. Big golden shields to wear over my heart. Angel wings with turquoise. Black tourmaline and labradorite and clear crystals. I feel exposed and vulnerable. Drained by something. I washed my home with protection oils while wearing all white. I walked around chanting with sage and cedar and incense and I don't feel the least bit self-conscious telling you that I am buying stones to grid my home.
I don't even know what I believe anymore. All of those things seem ridiculous to some part of me. I have these dreams that I am battling against horned men. Their horns curl around their ears and my only defense is sending someone else in there against them. I don't even believe in the devil, and yet he appears to me. And I always win, but I don't know what the metaphor is anymore. I sit with it and seek answers from oracles and psychics and astrologers and they always tell me that my heart knows what the answer is.
I have everything I ever dreamed. My daughter died, and I still say that. I appreciate that she was here at all, teaching me about the depths of my darkness and grief. I was a broken person, but I was not smashed. I was able to be found. I am back together. I easily remember all those days
I meditate on the blessings of these days--two year old Thor, five year old Beezus. They play together, and cling to each other, and tell me stories and bark like puppies and ask me questions about the moons and spells and sisters dying and butterflies. I love watching them draw people, and stories. I love learning about which books are their favorite, and not one moment in the day that I don't find something absolutely charming about them. I remember this time, like Beezus will too. That is the grace I walk into every morning. It is easy to imagine I am in control of something like curses and removals and my fate, but I control nothing. I never did. Clinging to that illusion is what is the curse, I think. My heart is telling me that. I must walk through each bloody hot wretched day and grid myself with their love. I am these people's mother. My job is to teach them what it is to be human. That is the sacred place of definitely-not-cursed.
I have no recollection if she was interested in using the potty. I don't remember how many words she had, or if her molars came in (they must have, they are here.) I don't know when she said "I love you" for the first time, or if she sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star as much as Thor does. I missed Lucia and appreciated Beezus with every ounce of me, but I couldn't commit either of them to memory. They were like sand. Every moment gone before it came.
Thor is severely speech delayed. I had no idea he was delayed, because I had no idea what to expect. I don't remember how many words Beezus had. I only realized because when I hung out with other two year olds, he didn't speak and they did.
He is slowly learning words, and talking. The speech therapist tells me that he is incredibly smart, above or at all his milestones, perhaps just a little lazy with his mouth movements. He'd rather say every word with a D. It is a very common speech delay for little bros. He gets so excited when his teacher is coming over, and he sits in front of her playing games with her. I hear him say Chicken perfectly. Pig. Cow. Boy. He raises his hand like he is in school, even though she is always calling on him and he is the only one answering. I like his teacher, she is kind and smiles at his little flirts and idiosyncrasies.
I feel like we are just starting summer. Guests and trips, then appointments and dentists and biopsies and food shopping and maybe we will never sit still again, wondering what to do. I think about making a schedule for us, but with what time? Every day is another appointment. Beezus keeps asking me, "Do you have my schedule yet?" She is a child run by routine. I am a mother run by routine, but I still can't construct anything schedule-y.
The yard is dry and our tomatoes seem to have some strange scorched disease. This summer has been brutal, and we spend more time inside than out right now. I hung my spider plant on the deck with my wind chimes that play the first notes of Amazing Grace. When the wind blows, it sometimes sounds like a song I once heard, and other times, divinely, I hear the beginning of Amazing Grace. Just a few notes, but like a prayer I whisper the words.
Amazing Grace.
How sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now, I'm found.
I still feel lost some days. The psychic told me that someone cursed me, and I feel like that was the curse. Wandering the halls of my brain, slamming doors and blowing out candles, haunting myself, pushing my own hand up to drop the groceries I just bought. Someone tells me to lay my necklaces and crystals outside to soak up the sun and the moon energy, and they will shine brighter. Protect me more. I keep buying protection jewelry. Big golden shields to wear over my heart. Angel wings with turquoise. Black tourmaline and labradorite and clear crystals. I feel exposed and vulnerable. Drained by something. I washed my home with protection oils while wearing all white. I walked around chanting with sage and cedar and incense and I don't feel the least bit self-conscious telling you that I am buying stones to grid my home.
I don't even know what I believe anymore. All of those things seem ridiculous to some part of me. I have these dreams that I am battling against horned men. Their horns curl around their ears and my only defense is sending someone else in there against them. I don't even believe in the devil, and yet he appears to me. And I always win, but I don't know what the metaphor is anymore. I sit with it and seek answers from oracles and psychics and astrologers and they always tell me that my heart knows what the answer is.
I have everything I ever dreamed. My daughter died, and I still say that. I appreciate that she was here at all, teaching me about the depths of my darkness and grief. I was a broken person, but I was not smashed. I was able to be found. I am back together. I easily remember all those days
I meditate on the blessings of these days--two year old Thor, five year old Beezus. They play together, and cling to each other, and tell me stories and bark like puppies and ask me questions about the moons and spells and sisters dying and butterflies. I love watching them draw people, and stories. I love learning about which books are their favorite, and not one moment in the day that I don't find something absolutely charming about them. I remember this time, like Beezus will too. That is the grace I walk into every morning. It is easy to imagine I am in control of something like curses and removals and my fate, but I control nothing. I never did. Clinging to that illusion is what is the curse, I think. My heart is telling me that. I must walk through each bloody hot wretched day and grid myself with their love. I am these people's mother. My job is to teach them what it is to be human. That is the sacred place of definitely-not-cursed.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
sober
I haven't had a drink in eighteen months.
Last night, someone reminded me that I had eighteen months sober. It is funny to be reminded. I wrote on TracyOC's blog that in the past, my periods of sobriety I marked off my calendar with a big black sharpie, like I was in prison. I counted days like I was dying of sober. So to be reminded tonight of how long I haven't drank tasted delicious.
It seems like yesterday that I was wondering if I had a problem with drinking while simultaneously trying to figure out how to stop drinking, (which should have been an answer to the first question) and then later, if I should write about all these shameful revelations here. Being an alcoholic is not shameful to me anymore. I protect myself in my daily life from earth people finding out about sobriety, because many many people still believe that alcoholism is a moral failing. I happen to believe it is a disease, and don't blame myself anymore than I would blame someone for their asthma.
On a day-to-day basis, sobriety is the most important aspect of my life. More than anything. It is ironic how little I write about recovery here, considering I am constantly speaking about it, talking in front of groups of people about my drinking, writing about it in other places. Oh, it is hidden in the words, woven into my narratives constantly. But I don't frequently write about sobriety as a way of life.
Last week, I visited my mother's house and found pictures of my sister and I as children. In every picture of my dad, we played spot the beer and cigarette. It made us laugh, and then I thought about that later in the night, and it wasn't so funny. I don't remember a day of my childhood in which my father did not drink. I no longer think of his drinking as a moral issue, or act like he had much choice in the matter. It just reminded me how important it is to not drink. If I can remain sober, my children won't know what it is like to live with a drunk. That keeps me going some days.
Someone said to me that I would never have gotten sober if Lucy hadn't died. I believe that. Lucy's death was the storyline of my drinking. Before that, my father's drinking and subsequent disease was the storyline, and in between there, cheating boyfriends and work and good times and bad times and there was always a storyline that had nothing to do with me liking the feeling of having all my emotions completely obliterated.
I said a prayer today. It was the most simple, most beautiful prayer.
Help me please. Thank you.
Last night, someone reminded me that I had eighteen months sober. It is funny to be reminded. I wrote on TracyOC's blog that in the past, my periods of sobriety I marked off my calendar with a big black sharpie, like I was in prison. I counted days like I was dying of sober. So to be reminded tonight of how long I haven't drank tasted delicious.
It seems like yesterday that I was wondering if I had a problem with drinking while simultaneously trying to figure out how to stop drinking, (which should have been an answer to the first question) and then later, if I should write about all these shameful revelations here. Being an alcoholic is not shameful to me anymore. I protect myself in my daily life from earth people finding out about sobriety, because many many people still believe that alcoholism is a moral failing. I happen to believe it is a disease, and don't blame myself anymore than I would blame someone for their asthma.
On a day-to-day basis, sobriety is the most important aspect of my life. More than anything. It is ironic how little I write about recovery here, considering I am constantly speaking about it, talking in front of groups of people about my drinking, writing about it in other places. Oh, it is hidden in the words, woven into my narratives constantly. But I don't frequently write about sobriety as a way of life.
Last week, I visited my mother's house and found pictures of my sister and I as children. In every picture of my dad, we played spot the beer and cigarette. It made us laugh, and then I thought about that later in the night, and it wasn't so funny. I don't remember a day of my childhood in which my father did not drink. I no longer think of his drinking as a moral issue, or act like he had much choice in the matter. It just reminded me how important it is to not drink. If I can remain sober, my children won't know what it is like to live with a drunk. That keeps me going some days.
Someone said to me that I would never have gotten sober if Lucy hadn't died. I believe that. Lucy's death was the storyline of my drinking. Before that, my father's drinking and subsequent disease was the storyline, and in between there, cheating boyfriends and work and good times and bad times and there was always a storyline that had nothing to do with me liking the feeling of having all my emotions completely obliterated.
I said a prayer today. It was the most simple, most beautiful prayer.
Help me please. Thank you.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
pluto
There is no flower bush worth a grudge. Still, away for a week, I could easily call up the memory of my anger. As I pulled up to our house, war bubbled beneath the still, brackish surface of me--all tears and green muck. I was away from my husband for a week, not because of the flowers, but just because.
I am easily stirred up, prone to hurt, but I let it go today. It was easier than I thought it would be. I crawl on nature like a lifeboat. Cling to it. Attach myself to things dead by the next season even as I practice non-attachment to people. Nature reminds me of impermanence, and because of it, I attach and mourn and attach again. All the nature I coax into wilderness reminds me of somewhere else. And that is what I feel like--Of Somewhere Else. A wildling, or a wild thing, or prey of wild things. Something with w-ings.
I trust language as far as I can throw it. I hurl it across the table, and it lands where it is supposed to. No one wants anything to do with that kind of communication. And I don't understand how something loving in my head comes out as venom. Unintentional and naive as I am. Clearly, I am not Earth People. I mean your people no harm. I am of somewhere else, like I said.
I was away for a week visiting my mother and stepfather. My sister was there too. I felt otherworldly, at the same time, in my tribe. While I was there, I saw the psychic that my mother and my grandmother consulted. She is 93 and told me that the spirits think I should eat before I drive home, and that a small nasal polyp that has plagued me on and off for the last decade or so was caused by a practitioner of voodoo who visited my home. She cast the polyp just to annoy me. It is representative of all the little things that annoy me. All the little curses cast by this person. And apparently, she just likes to annoy me. I thought it was because I did cocaine in the nineties, so that seemed like a positive part of the reading. She told me to take a pine oil bath and light some brown candles. That should take care of it, she said.
When I went to buy some brown candles, an astrologer at the shop told me I am pure Plutonian. I am attracting otherworldly people and readings right now, and so he drafted my astrological chart. I sat comfortably next to a turkey feather and a statue of Kali. The astrologer looked to be about thirty, but told me he is almost fifty. He sketched out all my troublesome aspects. "Your Pluto is personalized," he said. "Mine is too. I understand how hard it is for you, but you will look as young as me when you are almost fifty."
He went on, staring deeply into my eyes. "It is difficult for you. This life, this place, the relationships. For this lifetime, you chose a path of accelerated spiritual growth. It is so accelerated; in fact, it is almost all pain, struggle, drama, and anger. Your Mars and your Aries make love and fight and make love again. You will have many rebirths, many different phases of your life with different people and places."
That is true," I tell him.
"With your Venus where it is, you are fun in bed," he winks. "But it is a struggle for you to have any emotional connection in sex. Everything is a struggle. Embrace that, and you will be content. You should be proud of all the growth you have accomplished with all that Pluto energy. You will never quite fit in, except with your husband. Cling to that connection, don't let it sour. And that you don't fit in is okay, if you are okay with it. It is allowing that abusive voice to have power that will hurt you. You are prone to self-hatred. Remember that the voices of self-hatred will never tell you the truth."
"But those voices always know so much about me."
"They are lies. A Plutonian's journey is a cyclical journey to the underworld and back again. The dark and the light. Don't believe the self-hatred part. That was not put there by Pluto, that was put there in your childhood and it is a lie. Find a career where you embrace the dark. I think it is something with healing. You would be a gifted healer."
"Like write about grief and anger and resentment and drunkness and lose friends because of it, but keep writing?"
"Exactly. That is the perfect way to use your Plutonian nature. It is for the greater good that you embrace your darkness."
"I don't seem to have a choice."
"I must tell you this about embracing the darkness and losing friends and being who you are with your Mars and your Aries fucking all the time."
"Yes."
"No one can hurt you unless you give them permission."
I laugh. That quote is written on a small piece of paper in my wallet. I show it to him. Someone gave it to me at a meeting, I tell him. My friend gave it to me totally at random while someone else was speaking, and then he left the room.
"Nothing is at random."
Hmmmm.
"The interesting thing about Capricorn Plutonians is that they are born old souls, they work hard. They grow up too fast, but as they age, their burdens lessen. You get more childlike, more light, less burdened. It will get easier. That is what I can promise."
I burned the brown candles tonight with Frankincense while scalding myself in the pine oil bath. It felt satisfying to know that, astrologically, I am not supposed to feel at ease around earth people. It felt good to hear that I am someone who connects people even when I feel disconnected. That perhaps there is a reason that I start out from a place of love and somehow it all goes to shit and that is how it is for Plutonian people like me. Like the Plutonian tribe has the large medallion of a foot in the mouth. I meditate in the heat, sweating and breathing the deep musk of the herbs and smells of purgation and ritual. I remember the sweat lodges of Tucson and the vision quests I have been on. It smells pungent and earthy and sacred, and nothing like healing. I am okay not being healed. I refuse to become a seeker of cures.
+++
Sources.
by Adrienne Rich
II.
I refuse to become a seeker for cures.
Everything that has ever
helped me has come through what already
lay stored in me. Old things, diffuse, unnamed, lie strong
across my heart.
This is from where
my strength comes, even when I miss my strength,
even when it turns on me
like a violent master.
I am easily stirred up, prone to hurt, but I let it go today. It was easier than I thought it would be. I crawl on nature like a lifeboat. Cling to it. Attach myself to things dead by the next season even as I practice non-attachment to people. Nature reminds me of impermanence, and because of it, I attach and mourn and attach again. All the nature I coax into wilderness reminds me of somewhere else. And that is what I feel like--Of Somewhere Else. A wildling, or a wild thing, or prey of wild things. Something with w-ings.
I trust language as far as I can throw it. I hurl it across the table, and it lands where it is supposed to. No one wants anything to do with that kind of communication. And I don't understand how something loving in my head comes out as venom. Unintentional and naive as I am. Clearly, I am not Earth People. I mean your people no harm. I am of somewhere else, like I said.
I was away for a week visiting my mother and stepfather. My sister was there too. I felt otherworldly, at the same time, in my tribe. While I was there, I saw the psychic that my mother and my grandmother consulted. She is 93 and told me that the spirits think I should eat before I drive home, and that a small nasal polyp that has plagued me on and off for the last decade or so was caused by a practitioner of voodoo who visited my home. She cast the polyp just to annoy me. It is representative of all the little things that annoy me. All the little curses cast by this person. And apparently, she just likes to annoy me. I thought it was because I did cocaine in the nineties, so that seemed like a positive part of the reading. She told me to take a pine oil bath and light some brown candles. That should take care of it, she said.
When I went to buy some brown candles, an astrologer at the shop told me I am pure Plutonian. I am attracting otherworldly people and readings right now, and so he drafted my astrological chart. I sat comfortably next to a turkey feather and a statue of Kali. The astrologer looked to be about thirty, but told me he is almost fifty. He sketched out all my troublesome aspects. "Your Pluto is personalized," he said. "Mine is too. I understand how hard it is for you, but you will look as young as me when you are almost fifty."
He went on, staring deeply into my eyes. "It is difficult for you. This life, this place, the relationships. For this lifetime, you chose a path of accelerated spiritual growth. It is so accelerated; in fact, it is almost all pain, struggle, drama, and anger. Your Mars and your Aries make love and fight and make love again. You will have many rebirths, many different phases of your life with different people and places."
That is true," I tell him.
"With your Venus where it is, you are fun in bed," he winks. "But it is a struggle for you to have any emotional connection in sex. Everything is a struggle. Embrace that, and you will be content. You should be proud of all the growth you have accomplished with all that Pluto energy. You will never quite fit in, except with your husband. Cling to that connection, don't let it sour. And that you don't fit in is okay, if you are okay with it. It is allowing that abusive voice to have power that will hurt you. You are prone to self-hatred. Remember that the voices of self-hatred will never tell you the truth."
"But those voices always know so much about me."
"They are lies. A Plutonian's journey is a cyclical journey to the underworld and back again. The dark and the light. Don't believe the self-hatred part. That was not put there by Pluto, that was put there in your childhood and it is a lie. Find a career where you embrace the dark. I think it is something with healing. You would be a gifted healer."
"Like write about grief and anger and resentment and drunkness and lose friends because of it, but keep writing?"
"Exactly. That is the perfect way to use your Plutonian nature. It is for the greater good that you embrace your darkness."
"I don't seem to have a choice."
"I must tell you this about embracing the darkness and losing friends and being who you are with your Mars and your Aries fucking all the time."
"Yes."
"No one can hurt you unless you give them permission."
I laugh. That quote is written on a small piece of paper in my wallet. I show it to him. Someone gave it to me at a meeting, I tell him. My friend gave it to me totally at random while someone else was speaking, and then he left the room.
"Nothing is at random."
Hmmmm.
"The interesting thing about Capricorn Plutonians is that they are born old souls, they work hard. They grow up too fast, but as they age, their burdens lessen. You get more childlike, more light, less burdened. It will get easier. That is what I can promise."
I burned the brown candles tonight with Frankincense while scalding myself in the pine oil bath. It felt satisfying to know that, astrologically, I am not supposed to feel at ease around earth people. It felt good to hear that I am someone who connects people even when I feel disconnected. That perhaps there is a reason that I start out from a place of love and somehow it all goes to shit and that is how it is for Plutonian people like me. Like the Plutonian tribe has the large medallion of a foot in the mouth. I meditate in the heat, sweating and breathing the deep musk of the herbs and smells of purgation and ritual. I remember the sweat lodges of Tucson and the vision quests I have been on. It smells pungent and earthy and sacred, and nothing like healing. I am okay not being healed. I refuse to become a seeker of cures.
+++
Sources.
by Adrienne Rich
II.
I refuse to become a seeker for cures.
Everything that has ever
helped me has come through what already
lay stored in me. Old things, diffuse, unnamed, lie strong
across my heart.
This is from where
my strength comes, even when I miss my strength,
even when it turns on me
like a violent master.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
to all and everything
My husband invited a rather large green bush-eating monster who despised all things wild and untamed into our yard. The beast ate our wildflower beds, and our butterfly bush. The monster snorted and huffed up in a slightly savage British accent, "All the wild things in the world make me terribly sick." He chomped the bottom first, then pulled up the gladiola. Lavender caught in its front teeth and caterpillars hung from its lips. The brute stomped through our yard muttering about radicals. He waddled off, farting and muttering about chaos and the proletariat.
There was almost nothing left of the butterfly bush after the monster left. It was in full bloom with flowers just a few minutes before the monster came, a ton of butterflies visiting and circling. My husband stood proudly by. "Now we look like everyone else. Let us rejoice!" The bush is a weed to most people, but not to me. I see universes in its branches, her arms stretched wide beckoning all the flying creatures to come forth and live together in harmony. "Workers of the yard, UNITE!" Their signs read. Fairies and hummingbird and butterflies and moth create unions and collectives in her branches. Now it it looks like an amateur bonsai hackjob, sad and withered, forced into a subdivision of barely anything resembling bush. My wildflower garden is digesting in the belly of the brute, the leftovers put into yard sacks to sit on the curb until next Thursday. I cried, deep guttural moans, an incessant wave of mourning all day. "My nature, they killed my nature," I tell my sad story to anyone who will listen. It is unlike me to weep, but I raged and ranted, keened and screamed Mayakovsky from our front step.
WE ARE PAGANS!
WE VOW TO WORSHIP UNSANCTIONED GROWTH AND NATIVE TENACITY!
LET YOUR YARD GO WILD, HUMANS! LET IT BE NATURAL, STINKY AND MUSKY AND FULL OF SEX AND HEAT AND DEATH!
RISE UP WEEDS!
EMBRACE THE REVOLUTION!
I am a wild thing. My nest is gone. My sanctuary ripped out for order. The absence of those beds makes me feel misunderstood. I should be woven into a daisy chain and worn as a crown, rather than cut down with a gas-powered mower, the last bits of me grasping for earth as I am pulled out of the ground. There is nothing left for me here. Summer is oppressive and solitary. Without nature, it is empty. All my places are lost to suburban pressures. Grass is cut once a week. The neighbors wear khakis and eat Hamburger Helper. I feel weak for weeping, but suburbia is stronger than me.
I feel like I will never forgive my husband. It is stupid to be upset and sad about some plants, but I scream the Russian's words anyway and play pretend revolution, but I am just heartbroken and telling tall tales about monsters and Russian poets who cry for better working conditions for the people. The bush is gone and my flowers are gone. I screamed at the children today, because they were screaming at each other, then I wept about breaking that boundary in me. I don't have the strength to stay quiet. I am an coyote. A crow calling his friends, annoying the neighbors. No, I am a cicada whose deep hard shell is stuck to a lawn chair, broken open so delicately that it is hardly noticeable. In fact, I don't think my husband noticed I wasn't in there anymore. I almost looked alive, but I was not there. When the bush left, so did I. I will never understand flower beds and weeding and suburban ethics and I need to stop trying.
When I am like this, I sit in church basements and drink shitty coffee and pray constantly.
God, show me your path and grant me the strength to take it. God, help me accept. God, help me grieve. God, save me from myself.
It is the opposite of grief season here. The wind is hot and wet, my hair sticks to my neck and I beg for a breeze. It is a prayer tucked between strength and guidance. The dog knocks the wind chime when he bounds down the stairs, and I mistake it for wind, then I stand, open armed, waiting for the shell of me to be carried to a garden full of foxglove and butterfly bushes far away from green monsters, fibs about grief, and the bourgeoisie.
There was almost nothing left of the butterfly bush after the monster left. It was in full bloom with flowers just a few minutes before the monster came, a ton of butterflies visiting and circling. My husband stood proudly by. "Now we look like everyone else. Let us rejoice!" The bush is a weed to most people, but not to me. I see universes in its branches, her arms stretched wide beckoning all the flying creatures to come forth and live together in harmony. "Workers of the yard, UNITE!" Their signs read. Fairies and hummingbird and butterflies and moth create unions and collectives in her branches. Now it it looks like an amateur bonsai hackjob, sad and withered, forced into a subdivision of barely anything resembling bush. My wildflower garden is digesting in the belly of the brute, the leftovers put into yard sacks to sit on the curb until next Thursday. I cried, deep guttural moans, an incessant wave of mourning all day. "My nature, they killed my nature," I tell my sad story to anyone who will listen. It is unlike me to weep, but I raged and ranted, keened and screamed Mayakovsky from our front step.
An eye for an eye!
Kill me,
bury me -
I’ll dig myself out,
the knives of my teeth by stone —
no wonder!-
made sharper,
A snarling dog, under
the plank-beds of barracks I’ll crawl,
sneaking out to bite feet that smell
of sweat and of market stalls and eat the flowerbeds of writers!I vow to replant. I give speeches in the streets.
WE ARE PAGANS!
WE VOW TO WORSHIP UNSANCTIONED GROWTH AND NATIVE TENACITY!
LET YOUR YARD GO WILD, HUMANS! LET IT BE NATURAL, STINKY AND MUSKY AND FULL OF SEX AND HEAT AND DEATH!
RISE UP WEEDS!
EMBRACE THE REVOLUTION!
I feel like I will never forgive my husband. It is stupid to be upset and sad about some plants, but I scream the Russian's words anyway and play pretend revolution, but I am just heartbroken and telling tall tales about monsters and Russian poets who cry for better working conditions for the people. The bush is gone and my flowers are gone. I screamed at the children today, because they were screaming at each other, then I wept about breaking that boundary in me. I don't have the strength to stay quiet. I am an coyote. A crow calling his friends, annoying the neighbors. No, I am a cicada whose deep hard shell is stuck to a lawn chair, broken open so delicately that it is hardly noticeable. In fact, I don't think my husband noticed I wasn't in there anymore. I almost looked alive, but I was not there. When the bush left, so did I. I will never understand flower beds and weeding and suburban ethics and I need to stop trying.
When I am like this, I sit in church basements and drink shitty coffee and pray constantly.
God, show me your path and grant me the strength to take it. God, help me accept. God, help me grieve. God, save me from myself.
It is the opposite of grief season here. The wind is hot and wet, my hair sticks to my neck and I beg for a breeze. It is a prayer tucked between strength and guidance. The dog knocks the wind chime when he bounds down the stairs, and I mistake it for wind, then I stand, open armed, waiting for the shell of me to be carried to a garden full of foxglove and butterfly bushes far away from green monsters, fibs about grief, and the bourgeoisie.
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