on grief and healing

"Go to the grave of buried love, and meditate. There, settle the account with thy conscience for every past benefit unrequited - every past endearment unregarded - of the departed being, who can never, never return to be soothed by thy contrition! If thou art a child, and hast ever added a sorrow to the soul, or a furrow to the silvered brow of an affectionate parent; if thou art a husband, and hast caused the fond bosom that ventured its whole happiness in thy arms to doubt one moment thy kindness or truth; if thou art a friend, and hast ever wronged in thought, or word, or deed, the spirit that generously confided in thee; if thou art a lover, and hast ever given one unmerited pang to that true heart which now lies cold beneath thy feet - then be sure that every unkind look, every ungracious word, every ungentle action, will come thronging back upon thy memory, and knocking dolefully at thy soul; then be sure that thou wilt lie down sorrowing and repentant on the grave, and utter the unheard groan, and pour the unavailing tear - more deep, more bitter, because unheard and unavailing." - from The Country Gentleman: A Journal for the Farm, the Garden, and the Fireside, July 31, 1862.

on telling the truth

I danced with a man once at Barefoot Boogie who leaned in close after the music stopped, leaned in close with his arms and his chest and pressed himself against me. "You're so..." he closed his eyes, searching. We were both sweating - it had been one of the fast songs and we'd been twirling each other around and around - and I was trying to catch my breath. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked straight into me. "You're so real," he finished, and there was such gratitude in his face, such sincerity, that I tried to put aside that first, instinctive feeling of wanting to roll my eyes, then run away and add this to my growing Only-in-California list. I wrestled with myself, because I knew what it sounded like to me - a bad kind of flirting, a silly come-hither kind of thing a guy would say, trying to woo a girl into his fold and make her his forever...or for a night, at least. And that while it was sort of sweet in some weird San Francisco-dance-community-I-grow-my-own-dope-but-I'm-happy-to-share-it-with-you sort of way, I found it hard to really take it in. I hadn't felt any more "real" on the dance floor with him. I was pretty sure I was the same person who'd dropped into the studio an hour earlier, hesitating to take off my socks and shoes and get my boogie on in front of strangers. I was just dancing, that's all...so what, exactly, was he seeing?

I realized, later, that it had so little to do with me. Perhaps it had been awhile since he found a willing dance partner. Perhaps it had been awhile since he'd been around another woman's sweat. Maybe it had felt like forever since he'd had even the slimmest thread of connection with another person. I thought by telling me how "real" I was, he'd been trying to pierce through me somehow, extracting some quiet, bubbling kernel of Maya that needed to be discovered. And it seemed ridiculous to me that that could happen after just one dance, with a guy whose name I didn't know, and goatee I didn't much like, who was dripping his sweat right onto the front of my shirt. I thought I was as real as I could possibly be with a strange man in yoga pants and a receding hairline. In fact, I was trying to get even more real with the desire to leave the scene entirely and go home and shower myself free of the whole thing. But maybe this one, single dance had meant something to him - that's what he was really trying to say. Maybe he hadn't felt "real" in a long time, for any number of reasons, and these few spins around a hardwood floor in the Mission gave him something of the realness he craved. It didn't matter that I couldn't quite believe him, that I distrusted his words because of my innate suspicion of anything that sounded like a come-on. But it wasn't about me. Not really. He was telling the truth about him.

on waiting for the light to change

I am fascinated by the power of traffic lights. Amazed that each one of us, packed inside the little world of our cars, listening to different music, thinking our different thoughts, in love in with our different loves, living our different lives, would somehow manage to step outside all of this to follow the voiceless commands of a traffic light. That we could feel this grand, mutual allegiance to order, understand the intelligence of waiting, letting other people go, even when we're in a hurry, rushing to meet the doctor's appointment or the restaurant reservation or the first date, that we would put this all aside because we believe in and adhere to the little box that tells us when we're allowed to go. I wonder, sometimes, if we don't apply this compliance to areas of our lives that don't require this at all, if we go along only so far, only so long, before we need to wait and see if we've got the permission to continue. All I know is that funny thrill I get when I'm on foot, seeing the "no walking" sign but also seeing no traffic, checking to my left and right like a good girl, but seeing nothing. And then, because I've seen nothing, the delight of racing across the road, of disobeying the signs, or even my own embedded set of instructions. There's some molecule of instinct that must take over, washing over the whole of my body, lifting my eyes to the horizon of the other side, which had looked so far away before. That instinct somehow wins over order, and the urge to cross the big, bad road can't be undone by pixels in a box telling me to stay put, to stay safe. And it's only when I turn my gaze away from that blood-red hand telling me "no," when I don't wait for the light to change, that I set my own feet free.

right in the eye

"What we're talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye - not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and thinking. The truth is that when we really begin to do this, we're going to be continually humbled." - Pema Chödrön

a poem for the mothers in my midst

You have such strong shoulders.
There is nothing we’d rather do than climb on them and stay put.
No one would ever think you indecisive or ungenerous.
You know exactly how you stand, and where.
You rarely forget a face. And if you forget the name exactly,
you’ll notice the new shirt, the shade of lipstick, fresh haircuts,
a jasmine scent just purchased.
You are good at keeping the plane aloft.
You make baking disasters work in your favor.
You know how to keep cool. You take naps on hot afternoons,
stay in the shade during the last outs of the final baseball game,
make popsicles out of Kool-aid.
You know where the rest stops are on long vacation drives.
Your eyes never wander from their purpose.
Your mouth never forgets its smile. Your palms
are gentler than anything alive.
You know where the candles are during a blackout.
You tackle nightmares, fevers, and algebra with equal fearlessness.
You can save a bird from dying.
You know how to take away the mistake of a fall.
You keep appointments. You don’t lie.
You know where it hurts.
You say, “Don’t worry,” and mean it.
You reach to the top shelf, where the medicine is.
The sound of your voice is a compass of pure direction.

Even when our own faces are turned away,
our bodies a mess of pure, squirmy rebellion -
Even when we cross arms against chests,
use words you don't remember teaching -
Even in the dark, thick woods we lose ourselves to,
unclutching our fists of the giveaway red cape,
Know this:
we are listening, always.

ice cream

Walking with my grandmother, so beautifully effortless at 10,
down the Venice Beach boardwalk, a dozen dimes in my pocket
for ice cream, the fingers of my left hand
already forming a ring around the cone
because I believed that firmly in ice cream,
in 3 scoops of mint chip with jimmies,
and just past the singing rollerskater, Grandma
chops me down to the quick,
calls my name in the hot sun, then screams out "BAD POSTURE!"
as if a purse were being stolen off an innocent woman's shoulder.
Moments later, she's putting icy hands on my shoulders,
pressing them in, trying to undo the damage I caused
just be being a preteen, so loose with my own body,
I couldn't have seen it coming,
the awkward knot my bones would make just growing into themselves.

There was no time to apologize. I felt only
the eyes of the beach's happy, tan citizens,
saw what they saw, an old woman bending
toward a young girl and wiping the sun off her face.
Like a storybook villain, like sudden, cruel shadow,
she took my ice cream dreams away, and left my palms singed
with the terrible smell of iron.

34

Birthday girl says to herself: this is the year of consciousness.
She says: this is the year of follow-through and saying what I mean.
She adds: this year is about good decision-making,
of strong, stable, able-bodied-ness.
In her ears, 34 sounds like a state of gravity.
Not gravity as in sadness, but as in feet parallel to even ground,
34 as in sensible shoes and not too much
caffeine and taking your vitamins
and cleaning up after your messes and I mean more than just
vacuuming.
34 as in steady now,
as in it's alright to come down from the tightrope.

But then the calls come in, the mail,
a twittery chorus of celebration,
voices of unprecedented cheerful abandon,
and she's pushed out of her stoic alrightness,
the silent acceptance of another year passing,
and it didn't matter how last night
she'd gathered the bedsheets around her,
clutching the soft linens as if they were the only reliable
passageway to safety.

Those voices
are like a throttle letting loose,
like clowns on circus stilts weaving through a crowd,
like an ice cream truck warbling down Main.

Don't think too hard
they're saying.
It's definitely not about that.