When Obama endorsed same-sex marriage…
… I was like:
“Germans have a word, zwischen, which means between. “
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Stasis: A condition of balance among various forces; motionlessness.
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Limbo: An unknown intermediate place or condition between two extremes.
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Two nights ago, inside the darkest, most delicious sleep I’ve had in weeks, a dream formed with perfect clarity: I walked the path of the pond behind the house, but it was nearly dry. Dust and mud lay where the water had wasted away, and tracks crisscrossed from one side to the other, some animal and some human and some I couldn’t identify. In front of me loomed a large tree, bare but for one branch, sitting high up in the sky; it was the color of unbleached bones and as smooth as glass under my hand. I heard a noise, a low snuffling sound that carried across the still air, and as I looked to my left, I saw a large brown bear and two small cubs lumbering across what was once the shallow end of the pond. I was immediately fearful, but my companion remained calm, and said simply, “Climb the tree.” I straddled the trunk and despite the lack of handholds, shimmied halfway up before stopping. I looked down, at the man accompanying me on my walk, and his face was a perfect oval of white. “She will come for what she needs, and wants, when she needs and wants it,” his words floating to me on the smallest puff of stale, summery air. I trembled with both exertion and terror as the mother bear bounded towards me, sure she would attack. After a moment, I could feel hot breath on my bare legs, and then she was over me, several feet above me, exactly level with the lone branch; she shook it, and shook it, and amid the rocking motion, I woke in the early morning hours, no longer afraid, but comforted; in the cocooned space between my dreams and true awareness, I thought, “I can’t forget the bear. She is bigger than me, this is bigger than me. It is outside me. Remember.”
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“Brown bear people are born under the Harvest Moon, August 23 to September 22.”
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“The strength of Bear medicine is the power of introspection. The bear represent the west side of the Medicine Wheel. The West is the place of intuition, transformation, inner-knowing, shamanic journeying, dreams and visions. Bear teaches you to go within to solve problems and promote healing. Seek knowledge and wisdom through meditation and dreams. Go within your Winter Cave (subconscious mind) for renewal and the resources necessary for survival and healing.“
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So I turn inward, and stand in that place of zwischen, between two worlds; here, there is a kind of lazy silence, an easy quietening of the noise around me, and I slip into it gratefully. My thoughts are as heavy and laborious as my body in these final days, and at times I grow weary from carrying their weight; tears spring unbidden in a second, this tiredness, this desperate want, wanting this part of the journey over, wanting the intensity and the pain and the welcome pushing, wanting to feel her slip from the world of my womb to the world outside, to touch her skin and smell her newness and marvel at the perfection of a single eyelash. But first there is the waiting, every moment lingering longer than the one before, trying, trying, staying busy, distracted; each night I fall asleep thinking, “Maybe tomorrow….” but every tomorrow is more of the same. I feel her roll in waves as big as the sea within me and whisper to her that we’re ready when she is, and I don’t know if she hears me, but I close my eyes and I picture that great, beautiful, terrifying bear shaking the branch above my head, and I know that she will come for what she needs, and wants, when she needs and wants it; until then, I will rest my head against the seamless bark and wait.
–-
“Ursa Major (Latin: “Larger Bear”), also known as the Great Bear, is a constellation visible throughout the year in most of the northern hemisphere. It can best be seen in April.”
Asked, Answered, Assorted #1
Asked:
“What is the meaning of this life? Why is it so fucking hard? Why is it that when something good happens, something bad comes along to wipe it off?”
Answered:
The times I write the most – when I write the hardest, the most eloquently and fiercely and fervently – are the times of greatest personal turmoil. The words come easier when I am lost in the woods in the deepest, darkest night, the kind with no moon and only a smattering of stars to light the way; the kind of night that breeds timeless tales, grim and sparse and gray, stories sung around fires and whispered to small children with saucer eyes and the thrill of adventure creeping up their spines as they try to sleep; the kind of night that makes you believe the trees have teeth and the stones have ears and the creatures whisper, whisper to each other in the wake of your passing. In that place, in those moments, all the things I want to say appear like constellations above me, even though I am a Hansel-less Gretel, with the taste of too much candy and too much fear in the back of my throat, witch-shaped shadows on the walls around me; even though I crouch in a corner and pull my red riding hood down over me, making myself small and invisible, smelling crumbled cakes and unwashed fur and dirty flannel ripping at the seams; even though there are wild wolves and black bears and faces in the leaves, I look up and up and up
……and eventually I get where I am going, whole, and safe, and sound.
We are born naked, fragile things, full of so much undiluted life that it overwhelms us in our first breath; forever seeking out a space as impervious and unassailable as our mother’s womb, we make our way out into the world, and what we find is a place so beautiful and terrible and bright that it almost hurts to look at it with our eyes wide open. We wander lost for so long, seeking out the solace of souls made up like our own, and we brush flower-tops with our fingertips and taste thunder on our tongues and we take love in and try it on for size. And then one day when we’re eight or eighteen or eighty, we stop short and lift our heads and see our stories up there in the sky, floating around unformed, and the sun shines like a divining rod onto our spirits and the epiphanies come spilling out: we were made in the murky shadows and birthed into light, and everything in between is about bringing those two together in a delicate dance, one in which we are both hunter and hunted, predator and prey, omniscient and eternally unknowing. Without the villain, there can be no hero. Without the monster, there can be no slayer. Without the clammy desperation of what we imagine to be ceaseless dark , there can be no joyful exhalation as the first rays of light run golden fingers over the distant horizon. When we swallow up that blackest night and breathe in the brightest morning, we exhale the most beautiful shades of gray, dove-colored and downy soft; existing in this place, even if for but a moment, means setting fire to the fables that don’t apply and making up our own myths as we move through life.
“Time takes a mouthful of memory; two spoonfuls, you forget everything.” —Belle & Sebastian, “Hiding ‘Neath My Umbrella”
Dear Kiddo,
You’re seven today. Most days it doesn’t feel like I’ve taken two spoonfuls of time, but the entire bottle; it seems lifetimes can pass by in the span of one year, galaxies of generations in same-shaped hands and color-coded eyes.
This is your last birthday as an only child. Next year, there will be two of you, so I find today especially poignant; for so long, it’s just been you, and I couldn’t have asked for a better breaking in to motherhood. From the moment we became two instead of one, in a haze of sweat and tears and screams and shock, I haven’t stopped being stunned by you; the ways you teach me, and inspire me, and hurt me, and heal me. It was you who showed me that imperfect love is the most perfect love there is, constantly breaking and rebuilding hearts, tearing up souls and taping them back together again, crumpling up dreams and then smoothing out all the creases. Loving you has been the most authentically holy experience of my life.
I know a lot of words, but when I attempt to string them together to tell you how proud I am of the person you are, and the person I can see you becoming, they sound hollow and trite; instead, I think of images that speak to how I feel when you insist on being who you are in the face of others’ small-mindedness, when you think so consistently of the feelings of your friends, when you recognize injustice and call it out for what it is, when you draw and imagine and dream and hope, so loudly and with great abandon. I see a thousand balloons lifting off into the sky, and daffodils unfurling long limbs of yellow, and chasing lightning bugs under summer stars, and freckle-faced smiles underwater, and the quietest snow falling, and planets slow dancing through the solar system, and riding a bike with no hands. This is what it’s like to be your mother; a daily poem, a love song with off-beat notes and the most terrible lyrics you always secretly sing along to.
We have hard days. There are wars of independence, and the stupid skirmishes of day to day life when we stand on the battlefield of bath time, the hill of dirty clothes on the floor, the fort of feeling unheard, and we stare each other down; I was never as stubborn as you make me, but apologies come easy from both sides, and our relationship is woven together from the many white flags we’ve thrown down for each other. I’m so grateful for your good heart, the way it forgives and forgets and lets me in even in the moments I don’t deserve it. I hope you always wear it strapped to your sleeve, but wrap it up in barbed wire and be very careful about who you sneak in under the loose bit of fence when you think everyone else is sleeping.
I won’t tell you “don’t change” because change is so essential to leading a life of fulfillment, but I will say “accept change” because it is inevitable and it’s so much easier when we ride that wave instead of fighting against the undertow. Grab the shark by the fin and ride that fucker to your future; hold your breath when the water gets too deep and suck in mouthfuls of sky when your head touches the clouds. You may be destined for greatness, or you may be destined for an ordinary kind of life; whatever your fate, live it as fully and gracefully and kindly as you can, but don’t be afraid to say no, and don’t be afraid to say yes, and don’t be afraid to meander around in the middle every now and then, too. The shades of grey are where the rainbows really shimmer most and the pots of gold are just a mirage; the truest treasure is knowing who you are and what you love, and finding the balance between the comfort blanket of contentedness and the delicious drive of dissatisfaction. I think you’ll get there faster than I did, and I’m going to go ahead and take some of the credit for that, but mostly I know you’ll be okay because you have the best parts of me and the best parts of your dad, and together, we made this mind-blowing mix of everything the world needs more of.
Happy Birthday, hero of my heart. Today I celebrate and salute you. ♥
Love,
Mom
The room was completely filled with angels. There were statues of angels on tiny plinths. There were paintings of angels on the walls. There were angel frescos. There were huge angels and tiny angels, stiff angels and amiable angels, angels with wings and haloes and angels with neither, war-like angels and peaceable angels. There were modern angels and classical angels. Hundreds upon hundreds of angels of every size and shape. Western angels, Middle Eastern angels, Eastern angels. Michelangelo angels. Joel Peter Witkin angels, Picasso angels, Warhol angels.
— (via annamadeleine)
MusicArt.
DaveyArt.
FoodArt.
