whitecollarblueshirt

2006-06-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

lovehatewaltz

you know too much to walk out the door of self respect
into the hive
blur
name-slinging-mud-pie-at-the-face-hurling-inward-turned blasphemy
loathing shame stumps and scoundrelly dark patchy shadow swamps
it what is in between
the temporal bones today

all too clear
to get fogged up by that

spill

bloodsoak

flat out crunch up krunk style limb flinging dance gotta come
out
instead
gotta get the boots
the boa
grab the mic and sing into the sweltering dark
swaggering crowd of folks just like you trying to hug your own shoulders
the melting of it

the Peace

the piece of something bite-sized proud-sized extra room for growth
can you love yourself and hate the world be brave and love all of
it squeezed to you like a puppy at the
same time?

2006-06-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

getting older/younger/stranger

grama crying to see me, clutching me and talking in a squeaky voice, and I put her washed clothes away and realize she’s missing a shoe. we look under the table next to the bed, want a candy she says when we see the box under there, there’s one left. no shoe there. I love you so much she says, I’m so happy you came, and she sings a little while I clean up and is innocent as a six year old. keeps trying to tell me this sweater needs to go back to some lady who gave it to her and I’m telling her it’s hers, she knit it, I remember. she’s got slight blotches of caked on rouge on her cheeks and mussed hair, and when I tell her it’s time for supper she says what’s that, and where will we go and am I dressed right? we sit in the usual place next to alice, woman with the bluest sparkling eyes who tells my grama she doesn’t have to eat the soup if she doesn’t want to and rolls her eyes at me, while grama stabs at the cream of broccoli scornfully. the choice is shepherds pie or salmon and she keep asking me to eat but I’m but I’m not hungry and calls the palm-sized scoop of mashed potatoes with beef on top too much. coffee’s too hot. juice is good, she says. pecks at it the food. we leave before desert.
she loves it here she says but when we’re in her bathroom washing her face and hands, she want to go home, she wants to go! I am like a grooming monkey mother as I scrub makeup off her face, moisturize, brush her teeth and dentures, (hold your tongue back, chin up!),cut and file fingernails.

she has no sheets on the bed and I only noticed because I pulled back the comforter to sit. I find someone to ask. she had an accident someone tells me and someone was supposed to change her sheets. if I hadn’t asked she would have slept on her mattress pad.

when I walk out, there is the same smoking lady who perches on a bench over her walker and Winstons, spine rounded over, rut-deep wrinkles on her face. She was here when I came in. She is here now and sitting across from her is Mrs. Brown, my girl scout leader. I ran into her a few months ago but she’s doesn’t remember. she lives here now, upstairs in assisted living. looks exactly the same as she did 20 years ago. taught us how to make chocolate cake in cans over the campfire, and if you whined she said, I can’t hear you. brought her chainsaw into the woods to cut up firewood for us, twenty girls camping. she taught piano lessons and delivered beef from her farm to our house in a big bag over her shoulder. had a brood of kids, and exchange students and played avid tennis. here she is, same grey hair knotted on top of her head, talking to smoking lady, and smoking a cigarette herself. poised, nonchalant, and smoking. can’t get this picture out of my head as I glance back over, driving away from there.

2006-06-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

Ray-O-Sunshine-Frances-Bean

Lifting Franny in and out of her car seat this morning. The strap is tangled and she can tell I don’t really know how to fix it but she puts her sippy cup between her legs on her ruffled jean skirt and lets me fumble and helps me get her arms in, and asks for her mom who we just dropped off for an appointment. I tell her we’re going to play on the playground and after that we’ll go get mommy, so she smiles because I am so happy to see her; I am more thrilled than I’ve ever been to see a child in my life. I have been away from her and my sister Zoe for two days. I wept copiously for about twelve hours straight when they left on Wednesday. I get to see them again for a few hours today. After today, it is likely that I won’t see her again for months. Maybe four months. I will go there for her 2nd birthday in October. Cera is driving to the playground and we’re like a comedy routine, me trying to get Franny into the seat, Cera trying to get two carriages into the trunk because she has her six month old son Eddy. Frances says Eddy’s name, it sounds like Ehheee. We’re in and driving and I’m turned around in my seat holding her hand and she makes the sign for her baby, (rocking) and asks for her. She’s in the back I say. Dumb me, her baby doll is in the trunk. She rubs the back of her hand under her chin back and forth which is baby-sign language for blankie, and I say, that’s in the back too, but I’ll get it when we get to the playgound and she’s somehow ok with that. I feel like Amelia Badelia. The sign for blankie is really the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen in my life, that little paw, that face, those wide eyes, the dearness of this; it’s heartbreaking.

She’s reasonable, which is a strange thing to say about an 18 month old, but she is, she listens, and is patient, and understanding, and there is a palpable wisdom and tenderness about this girl. Something crazy transcendant. When we get to the park I say, here it is, here’s the playground, Yay! and she imitates, eeeYay!! It’s gross how cute her voice is. Watching Franny stroke the silken edge of her blanket up and down between her middle and ring finger while gazing out of the car window is one of my favorite sights, by the way. She says awww, when she sees a baby, or cat, and pants when she sees a dog, and says yeah, or huh definitively when you ask her if she likes something. If she gets wet or dirty she points it out, but she’s ok with it, she’s sensitive, but chill. She’s sleeping in all different houses and on this whirlwind two week friend and family visiting tour with her capable calming mom, and waking up at 4am and screwed up with travel, and I tell you, this kid is better at coping than any adult I’ve met, and even in her crankiest, rummy, tripping over her feet tired state, she is good. Good. She’s crazy-dancing in her swing while I push her, and laughing at my flailings, and when Cera and I crack up for real and she hears us, she joins in like huhhuhhhuh, imitating us and trying to laugh with us even though she has no idea what’s so funny.

I am running after her in the wet grass of the park, and she can’t go on the slides since they’re soaked because it rained, but we’re playing the I’m gonna get you game, and she is squealing, and waddling, and loving whatever we do. I say, you love to play ball don’t you, as I am describing to Cera how coordinated she is, I say, you kick the ball, and you love it, don’t you? Yeah, she says. The best thing in the world is having Frances say, yeah, nodding her head, eyes sparkling because she knows I get how much she loves it, and she is thrilled to be talking about her kicking a ball, and let me tell you, I am completely in love with my little niece, glory be to god that she is on this planet.

2006-03-09T12:48:00.000-08:00

Mind The Gap

When you ride the Tube in London, there is a calm, mechanically neutral thoughtful voice, addressing commuters as the doors slide open and closed. “Mind The Gap.” it reminds, referring of course to the small cavernous space between subway and platform. It has become a bit of London tourism, and you can purchase t-shirts, coasters, and stickers labeled with this helpful adage.

I was speaking to my friend today about the gap between emotion and action and this subway voice came to me in a swoosh of air and metal, and I considered it as a useful mantra. The word Mantra literally means, “that which protects the mind”. Before we step foot on the train cars of life, let us peer for a moment right into the gap, tenderly, fragily separating us from our platform, and our car, from our feelings, and our words, from our feelings, and our actions. Perhaps we are triggered by old wounds, by trauma, by very current wounds, by a cloying fit of road rage, or by our partner or mother or child. Maybe we are like the sweet scraggly dog who has learned to expect a slap, and cringes at the slightest raising of the hand, and so we snap, defend, and argue our position in life, merely surviving, merely contracting at best, and at worst being in destructive relationships, patterns, and positions.

So here- it is helpful to get vigilant about the gap. The gap is that delicate vibrating space before the chi and fire rises up into our throats, before our breath gets short and raspy, before we check out, disassociate, and leave our bodies, shout, before we say things we regret later, before our wounds get tearing about, shredding things like small ferocious tornadoes. We blame the external world. If our partner didn’t do that, or did it differently, or if we hadn’t gone through what we went through, or if any number of things were in place, it wouldn’t be so difficult. If we are locked in trying relationships, we try in fact to change one another to ease discomfort. Our yoga and meditation practice can teach us to be comfortable with discomfort. To notice. Viphassana meditation, for example, is sitting completely still and noticing the ache, the itch, the burning at the spine. Noticing, and letting go.

The gap, is literally the time and space where we can notice, and observe, before we react. It is a good thing. We move about through life at breakneck speed, jumping onto trains without a glance, or thought, or breath. In order to slow down, we study ways to focus on breath, on the present, on smelling the roses, air, ocean, by studying yoga, meditation, tai chi, chi gong… Here, in this sweet gentle place, in these contexts, it is easy to mind the gap. It may be physically demanding to sit in pigeon, with hip crying out to get comfortable, and glutes burning, and brow furrowing, but here we can notice sensation and let it go. There is safety here. We can use this experience as a lesson to take into the field, our practice; a literal boot camp for life.

We forget to mind the gap when we are cut off thoughtlessly, calculatingly in traffic, when we are insulted, or rattled, when we are dismissed or yelled at. In my relationship with my partner, my wounds are wide open, and salted, and stinging, and so noticing, before reacting, is like holding back the ocean. Feels as difficult as stopping the rain, and this is my karma, my lesson. I fight because it is the well-worn path, rutted, carved by water, years, practice, because all of my life, for survival, I HAD TO. I fought back because I was attacked, reamed, bore down on, pushed, provoked, criticized, overpowered, imposed upon, squeezed in the vice-grip of this; and I was furious. I began to doubt my own reality. I began to check out, loath myself, get reactive and scrappy.

If any of these things happen for you, you will do well, like me, to study ways in which to slow this process, to mind the gap, and stay in it like a little respite, a reprieve. It will happen again. Something will trigger your anger, or defenses, and you will want to act without thinking, and shout perhaps, and curse, defend, leave your body, curl up, withdraw. Just keep trying and don’t lose heart. Keep trying to get quiet, taking deliberate breaths, do mantra, do whatever it takes. Notice the habits, notice the fierce desire gripping, and addictive, to resort to old ways of handling conflict and fear. Notice, but don’t judge. Send loving kindness to yourself, the situation, the traffic, the fear, the partner, the child, the boss, the stormy weather. In the noticing, is the magic, in the minding, is the space to create another reality, space and room for deliberation, consciousness, and choice. Change will come as naturally as the inhale necessarily follows the exhale, and there is great comfort in knowing you are in charge of the words and actions which come from you. There is comfort here, in this inky quiet, this poised for motion, but presently unwavering, gap.

2006-02-24T15:38:00.000-08:00

Mutterings on life, yoga, fear, singing in my Gospel concert tomorrow...

Eleanor Roosevelt said “Do Something you’re afraid of each day”. It’s Olympic time, and so we watch brave athletes hurtling over mountains, feet first down icy tracks, triple axiling their weightless limbs through groin pulls and nagging injuries, and we are reminded of this; it isn’t that these folks are less fearful than us, or more brave, or unencumbered by doubt, or competition, it is just that they do it anyway. They get out of a warm bed and onto a cold slope because as they fly over half pipes as if their lives depended on it, they are met with passion, purpose, and resonance, so something clicks, and they are meant to be there.

E.L. Doctorow said “Writing a novel is like driving at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” In order to be present, I remind myself of these universally applicable words- Life is like driving at night, singing a solo in front of 500 people when you haven’t performed in 15 years is like driving at night; you look right there at what’s in the headlights, or spotlights, and you stay there, because that’s all you need to do right now. It is the getting ahead of ourselves that messes us up, inciting panic, doubt, and suffering. It is the jumping into the future to the next measure, or paragraph, or task, or conversation, it is what is going to happen next, which challenges our little thumping heart. “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened,” said Mark Twain. So we breathe, and we find a focal point, and we take our yoga off of the mat and into our daily lives, beginning to integrate its age-old lessons.

My yoga practice helps me face this rather intense stage fright I’m experiencing, so perhaps instead of battling it, I let it be there, noticing the feelings and thoughts, as simply electrical impulses from this complicated, curly organ in my skull, and I think notice them, I think, find that Dristi, soften the gaze, and come back to the breath, as an anchor.

I am afraid of being in front of people. Tomorrow I sing in front of 500 of them. I am afraid of looking at a group of people, and I am afraid of them looking at me. Even in my yoga classes, sometimes, I am afraid of being seen, but there, it’s ok if I close my eyes. My friend Rebecca, who frequently performs said, if you close your eyes the whole time you sing, people will think you’re inside yourself too much, not engaging with the audience. I’m like that kid who closes her eyes and says, you can’t see me! Fear of being seen. Fear of failure. Fear of worthiness, fear of shining, fear of feelings, fear of fear. Like so many others, I want to be good at what I do, and my standards are high, and quite likely higher than anyone else’s. The insidious thing about fear is that it feeds itself, compounding, and doubling back on itself, until it reaches epic proportions. Notice your fear and let it breathe, be with it, next to it even, instead of letting it own you. Notice the difference between intuition, and fear.

The other night at rehearsal, I experienced an anxiety attack, replete with a spinning room, wind-tunnel sounds, and an internal dialogue which went something like this- that wasn’t good, ok, that was even worse, you suck, you’re doing terribly, people can tell you’re not doing well tonight, people think you’re not happy, you look anxious, you feel anxious, you’re getting anxious about being anxious…you don’t deserve to be up here, no one likes you, no one else is suffering like this, what were you thinking, thinking you can do a solo, you idiot… and on and on until I wanted to run out the door, give up, and ultimately, quit. I decided to stay. I decided to practice non-attachment to the outcome, and I toyed with the idea of being bad at singing, fraudulent even, imperfect, less than ideal. I’m not ok with it, but I’m working on it. The show must go on, but not without reflection. We can do things we are moved to do, but afraid of, and we can glean meaning from the mental acrobatics, milking these experiences for rich, expansive lessons.

A comforting aspect of yoga practice, is that this is where it ends; it is entirely about process, and does not culminate with a concert or competition, or match. We may never achieve pretzel status, touching toe behind us to the crown of our head, or making vinyasa look effortless, and we may forget to breathe, or topple over out of headstand or fall in and out of balance and strength. We can use our yoga practice as a way to practice staying present with difficult and uncomfortable physical postures, and we can apply this to all aspects of our lives. Stephen Covey extracts meaning from the word responsibility, quite literally, reminding us that it is the ability to respond. We are steering this boat, and we are choosing how to be in our car, or in line, in our relationships, in the yoga studio, or up on stage, we choose how to respond to life. We can send love to our fears and shadows, even when it stretches us quite literally, well beyond our comfort zone. We can choose how to respond to all parts of this raggedy, beautiful, messy medley of a life. And maybe we even sing about it.

2006-02-02T23:27:00.000-08:00

I took the month off to twist and turn and convolute in cerebral landscapes like a fearful worm; but I'm back, I want to and have to be back- to the blog- the blog gets me writing whether or not I want to, or think I can. Ya know what it is? I get overwhelmed by all of things I want to write about and kind of melt-down, and avoid it. And a lot self-criticism has taken over this month, like a mold. What is the point of our criticizing ourselves, or, rather, can it serve us at all? Do we think it spurs us on, lights fires under our asses, gets us going? Mine is mixed with pure terror that I won't amount to anything, sort of, or rather, that I won't accomplish the things i dream about and will die with regret if I don't at least try. THings I (feel) I must do, or really want to do before I die: write a few books: short stories, non-fiction, etc., sing in band, write songs, be on stage, various visual art projects, installations, dance (hip hop, ballroom, african) and help, research, write about, rehabilitate various animals. Ya know, there's shitloads more, and all kinds of fleshing out of the aforementioned catagories, but that's the gist. Also travel more, all around the world preferably, and write about it. My friend Ryan tells me, via friend Rebecca, who was suspiciously tipsy at the time, that anythig is possible. and that I am loved. I love that. I love you, friends.
So Happy February! January was moody and hot and cold, and full of great Daily Show episodes, farty lying memoirists, brave journalists, surviving, and good movies, (um, none of which I've seen). But seriously, long live Jon Stewart! So here's to longer days, thoughts of groundhogs scurrying around in holes, and valentine day silliness. If months were weeks, February would be Tuesday, I think. March is hump-day Wednesday, and spring is the weekend. I can handle Tuesday. Here's a poem for the start of this month, by Kabir:

The Unknown Flute

I know the sound of the ecstatic flute,
but I don't know whose flute it is.

A lamp burns and has neither wick nor oil.

A lily pad blossoms and is not attached to the bottom!

When one flower opens, ordinarily dozens open.

the Moon bird's head is filled with nothing but thoughts of
the moon,
and when the next rain will come is all that the rain bird
thinks of.

Who is it we spend our entire life loving?

2006-01-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

06

You are a breath-puff
real, bristling
surrendering to rhythm

Forsaken once
Rediscovered
reckless,
spotted: distilled

A fragrant sip made bubbles out of me

So feeling certain clauses out of closure
So birthing:
Life
Lived

Brimming on a gospel song
sweet wet air
sweet
refrain

Only days forming, fomented
moments like dew-- neat bundles
hanging
in potential.

2006-01-05T07:59:00.000-08:00

Confirmation

Erica's father was a Nazi soldier and her paintings are full of skeletons.
Skull heads, and day of the dead Basquiatish death scenes; they are full with paint, and collage, and fierce.

I adore her work.

They are beautiful somehow.

Erica is in her seventies now, with white roots peeping under fire-dyed hair, stabbing at the air in all directions. She wears constumes, gloriously loud colors, has an old Dacsund named Bingy, and has been married forever. For six years, I taught art to kids at the art center where her studio is located, and we saw each other in passing. We knew the same people, and we always spoke briefly, heavily accented, kind words issuing from her, but she was always on her way to something; rushing.

Last year I saw her at my friend's opening and she had no hair, wore a head wrap. Cancer, and doesn't look good, said my friend. I didn't get a chance to talk to Erica that day.

A few nights ago I dreamt about her. I was wandering, ghostly. in the hallway outside of her studio, and her paintings hung on the walls all around me. Her door was closed, and I worriedly asked passersby if she was alive. Is Erica all right, I called, is she still making paintings? Is Erica here? No one answered.

The next day, I went shopping, and came out of Whole Foods to blustery wind, bags everywhere, hair whipping. Fixed on my car, I moved quickly to get my things inside. And there, doing the very same thing, parked right next to me was Erica.

I don't know if she believed me when I told her I dreamt about her last night and wildly threw my arms around her three times. I'm so happy you're alive, I yelled. I was sick, and now I'm better, she grinned, hugging me back. And here's Bingy, she pointed, as he sat on the driver's seat with stumpy legs and a greying muzzle.

Her hair was red and thick and jagged, and as we drove away, waving to each other one last time, she in her purple glitter sunglasses, I felt like we had both recovered from something.

2005-12-22T15:17:00.000-08:00

Party With the Earth

Today is the winter Solstice, and I sat in the sun briefly, lapping it up, worshiping it for five glorious minutes; needing it. It has already snowed here, and iced, and been unseasonably cold so that the snow has remained, fixed and glossy, coating things, making roads and sidewalks dangerous. We move cautiously, gingerly, manuevering with forethought. I slipped down to my car one night, bent my knees and surfed on a dark icy road, thankful for my balance. I have moved from clogs to snow boots, sacrificing style for practicality, and am thankful for my snow tires. There is an austere, necessary sense of survival living here in the Northeast; there is warming up the car before going out, there are puffs of breath, grumpy bouts of shovelling out tires, and gloves, and fogging glasses. The sun is far away, and I strive to get up earlier to have more day in my life, more light in my days.

To celebrate the Solstice, I gathered with other yoga practitioners to do 108 sun salutations, Surya (sun) Namaskara (salute), a series of movements coordinated with breath. There are many reasons for the Hindu and Buddhist belief in the sacredness of the number 108. Originally there were 54 sounds in the Sanskrit alphabet. Double 54 and you get 108, which is also the number of beads in the mala (meditation prayer beads). There are 108 Upanishads, the sacred Vedic texts. 108 is also 9 times 12, two propitious numbers in Indian culture. Every ten repetitions a chime was rung by one the two people leading us, switching off to show us different variations. For the first few of each variation they spoke, but then there was no talking, and the sound was breath, Ujayii (meaning victory) breath, droning music, and then more breath, the sound of mine mingling with others, a breath which mimics the ocean. When I wanted to stop moving, I was heartened by those around me, and I kept going, feeling sore, and tired, feeling tendons and muscles shifting, feeling ny bones. Sometimes, weary, we’d rest in child’s pose, but then we kept standing up, trying some more, sweating, laboring in physical ways as metaphor for how we want to lead our lives off of the mat. We practiced gratitude for returning sun, for turning the corner into longer days, this the shortest day of our calender year. I thought, cultivate devotion. I thought it again and again as repetition took me to another place, a different place, a bigger place, outside of daily fluctuations, above the grind of tasks, into the sun, into the mystery of seasons, and orbiting earth, and all things connected, and in flux.

In showing up at the front of the mat, time after time, Chaturanga, Urdva Muhka Svanasana, Adho Muhka Svanasana, Sanskrit terms floating through my brain; we are cultivating Tapas, the sanskrit word for disclipline, literally translating as *heat*. Enough heat can turn stone to steel, make tools, turn glass to vessels, clay to pots, turn solid to liquid, affect change. With heat, discipline, and repetition, we transform, transmute, and metamorphose- we take our bodies, get on our mats and place our hands in prayer position at our heart 108 times to honor the sun which gives us life. Without sun, we have nothing, and with it we have tides, food, life, heat, night, contrast, sparkle, shadows. If we do not know if there is God, and do not know what to do with another commercially driven Christmas holiday, jostling in and out of malls to shmaltzy musack with bags full of books and clothes, and electronics, if we wonder what we are doing in this country, in these politics, in this war and enmeshed in tradition and ritual, driving around with grand, cut-down firs and spruces to display in our homes, then let us come back to the sun. Let us party with the earth, place our faces in the light, look long at ruddy sunsets, streaking purple at dusk, and let us cultivate a sense of gratitude for the our tilting, resilient planet; beathing, moving, sweating, doing the best we can, and not giving up.

********************************************

Chant to accompany Surya Namaskar

Om Hram Mitraaya Namah Salutations to Mitra, the bestower of universal friendship

Om Hrim Ravaye Namah Salutations to Ravi, the bestower of radiance

Om Hrum Suryaaya Namah Salutations to Surya, the dispeller of darkness

Om Hraim Bhaanave Namah Salutations to Bhaanu, the shining principle

Om Hraum Khagaaya Namah Salutations to Khaga, the all-pervading

Om Hraha Pushne Namah Salutations to Pushan, the mystic fire

Om Hram Hiranyagarbhaaya Namah Salutations to Hiranyagarbha, the golden colored one (who brings healing)

Om Hrim Marichaye Namah Salutations to Marichi, the light

Om Hrum Aadityaya Namah Salutations to Aaditya (an aspect of Vishnu)

Om Hraim Savitre Namah Salutations to Savita (Savitri) the impeller

Om Hraum Arkaaya Namah Salutations to Arka, the remover of afflictions

Om Hraha Bhaaskaraaya Namah Salutations to Bhaskara, the cosmic brilliance

2005-12-13T09:48:00.000-08:00

The artist is distinguished from all other responsible
actors in society-the politicians, legislators, and
scientists by the fact that he is his own test tube,
his own laboratory, working according to very rigorous
rules, however unstated these may be, and cannot allow
any consideration to supersede his responsibility to
reveal all that he can possibly discover concerning
the mystery of the human being. Society must accept
some things as real; but he must always know that
visable realty hides a deeper one, and that all our
action and achivement rests on things unseen. A
society must assume that it is stable, but the artist
must know, and he must let us know, that there is
nothing stable under heaven. One cannot possibly build
a school, teach a child, or drive a car without taking
some things for granted. The artist cannot and must
not take anything for granted, but must drive to the
heart of every answer and expose the question the
answer hides.

James Baldwin, "The Creative Dilemma" (1962)

2005-12-09T13:10:00.000-08:00

A First Draft: My Personal Statement for Grad School Applications

One of my oldest friends; we met when we were 15 years old while attending a small, strange Christian high school, read my blog and commented on it several months ago. The blog is about identity as it pertains to work, and attempts to describe the familiar floundering of a creative person trying to find a way to live, make money, make art, and be authentic on the journey.

For our three years together, Chris and I reluctantly attended morning bible-centered assembly meetings, remaining ever agnostic and inspiring each other with film ideas, (The cook, the thief, the wife and her lover, Dreams by Akira Kurosawa), literature, (I was doing an independent study on the works of DH Lawrence, he was reading The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker, and cool British magazine Wallpaper), and music, (everything). We wrote pop/rock songs together in his loft bedroom at the top of his parents home near Cambridge, and as he was an only child, he had everything, technologically advanced even then, outfitted with all manner of recording equipment. There were manic song-writing collaborating moments; and phone calls singing together; me tethered excitedly to the phone, hiding in the bathroom where the cord could reach, listening to riffs, and parts of songs and harmonies just released by the Indigo Girls; bits he called *brilliant* as I listened raptly. We were rock stars.

Nearly 20 years later, Chris now goes by the name Blade, and I haven’t bothered asking why, assuming perhaps, that it is a tribute to his fencing days. He eats Steak Tartare, dabbles in wines, roasts hazelnuts, tosses haricot vert with pesto, and drives a Mercedes SUV. He has worked his way from design and production, to sales, in a number of voice simulation software companies. He is rich, and owns a waterfront Boston loft, and I don’t know who is is anymore. He is (happy?). I am writing away like the Taoist proverb advises, not with the torrent of water which does not affect the stone, but with tiny drops of water dripped patiently and continuously, carving deeply into impervious rock. I hope. I drive a beat up Jetta and have worked as a chef, art teacher, housepainter, and office temp. Am I happy? We are all somewhere in the mix.

“Society must accept somethings as real,” James Baldwin wrote in his 1962 essay, The Creative Dilemma, “but (the artist) must always know that visible reality hides a deeper one, and that all our action and achievement rests on things unseen. A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven. One cannot possible build a school, teach a child, or drive a car without taking some things for granted, but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the answer the question hides.” No one is less assured of clear, successful results, than the creative person, but then, how do we measure results? I recently attended a lecture by MIT professor Michael Hawley, who recently published the largest book in the world, a stunning, saturated color photography book on Bhutan, the small, sweet, sequestered country hidden in the Himalayan mountain range. These are the happiest people per capita, he endorsed, than anywhere else in the world. How was this measured, my boyfriend raised his hand to ask? He chuckled, and wasn’t sure. They are buddhist, and non-westernized, with glowing rosy cheeks, beathing clean mountain air. But I live here in the most theatrically capalist country in the world, where the air is smoggy and thick, and where the holiday season is pre-empted by months of loud, rajasic television ads for *stuff*; so I am trying to make sense of things here. I will say it, shamelessly, like so many others, at the risk of spouting rhetoric, that I do what I do because it is my truth. I make stuff not to be happy and path-ful (Chris), but to process this ever confounding world of ours, and simply-- because I must.

Chris and I stay in touch, trying to connect now and again, and he let me know, the last time he wrote, that art has no path.. I was captivated for a brief moment; seduced by visions of career clarity, of shedding the amorphous art-making burden, like a rumpled too-large faux-fur coat, for the light, streamline trench, “You may not like any given job you have, but if you pick a ‘career’,” he tells me, “then you’ll rise to the level where you do more of the stuff you like and less of the stuff you don’t like. It’s finding something with a path that’s hard,” he informed. “Art has no path, so it will never yield a happy, relaxed result. Even if you write a book and sell a million copies, you’ll be concerned that the next one will be a failure. A career is like a diploma--once you reach various plateaus, you can relax, knowing you have reached a certain level.” I am wondering where soft, frantically creative Chris went, as mechanical, shiny, and exacting as the moniker suggests, Blade has taken over. “The thing about a career,” he continues, .”is that you don’t give up, “ he continues as if he is trying to convince himself, “you keep at it, through boredom, and realize that there’s a next step to conquer.”

In all fairness, he sees me bobbing in the water for breath, writing, painting, and knowing not how to like my work, churning it out consistently, never mind sell myself, so he tries to throw me a life raft. Marketing, he suggests. “My friend needs help to market his restaurant, and you might find that interesting.....could be the start of a marketing career (which you would do very well in, I think),” he says. I am to let him know if I’m interested.

At this point in the trajectory, graduate school inspires fantasies of the sort of capitalist grid-jumping escapism (I'm picturing leaping from a loud, hurtling train) to which the writer Steve Almond’s essay on being an MFA applicant reader refers. A break from the madness. Haven't read it yet, but maybe Rodney Rothman had this sort of idea when he went prematurely into assisted living and wrote Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement At the same time, an MFA program feels sort of deliciously indulgent. The application process is a useful exercise nonetheless, as putting art out into the smeary world of public always is. As an undergraduate, I went to art school where we were routinely required to hang our deepest cloying, achingly expressive work on the wall to be raked across the proverbial coals of other people's (really all it boils down to) opinions. We went away from “crits” with our tails between our legs, or our heads held high, trying to get our bearings in the cynical world of judgment. We tried not to make art that would sell, but aspired for the allegedly elevated aspiration of truth. At the end of the day, there is something for everyone; there is Rebecca Horn with her bristling kinetic art installations; two guns suspended from the gallery ceiling intermittedly shooting great blasts of red paint at each other, splattering opposing walls, and her counterpart, Thomas Kincaid, who sells his work in malls, deftly illuminating the plushly safe pastoral walls of decorating Americana-kitsch lovers everywhere. In the end, though, it is just us with our naked little words, wind whistling through our brains as we type or paint something that rings true for *us*.

I would rather have a clear, plot-able career course at times when the creative juices get gurgling in my head too loudly, and the daunting task of making money, making art, and making sense of things looms largely overhead like blackened thunder clouds, but I would take my Jetta and my tattered painty jeans over polished career-burdened friend Chris any day, and feel crazy and alive for saying that. Steve Almond advises, when writing a personal essay for graduate school, to steer clear of well-meaning clichés such as “I have been writing for as long as I can remember, I am hopeful your program will allow me the time to hone my fiction, and I am seeking an environment that will nurture my work.” But alas, all of these are true. Largely, I want the chance luxuriate in the anonymity and stimulation a big city campus affords, and to meet folks, make connections, and settle warmly into the confines of deadlines and requirements, semesters, and rosters, and the buoyant, blooming world of academia, where possibilities are limitless, and a backpack perching safely on my back, is like the protective shell of a great, confident turtle.

2005-12-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

Prisms

In bold print this resume gets all that I have again pockmarked, italicized
in inky proof: experience
and nobody knows this
but I’m older than dirt and capable
surefooted, smarmy, slithering over tasks like dew on grass I’ve
been there
done just about all I care to do for corporate you coughing out
spools of scantily covered promises in chintzy e-mail Helvetica fonts

I’ve filed your name amongst the ones who bruised my creativity and dragged away the carrot
dangled diligently just enough away to
send me roving
sell yourself they cried and be a thing
to get the paper-green you need to eat and sleep
and be a monkey mannequin all plastic spindly fingers
pointing down against the window pane
be coiled up
awaiting just conditions, just the perfect weeding out of grim small talk
such are the interview words above crossed legs

Distilled myself to four terse paragraphs
wore clothes that didn’t fit, and numbers like in a deli line

So prisms that we were
catching light in myriad ways
pretended to be only simple glass

2005-12-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

Working for Life: My Grandmother, Belmira Pacheco

I am not sure how this happened, but since arriving in the assisted living facility, nearly three years ago, my maternal grandmother’s name has changed. Born Belmira Mendonca, in 1918 in Fall River, Ma, she was the daughter of immigrants from Brazil and the Azore islands off of Portugal. Portuguese was her first language, and she grew up poor during the depression, and in keeping with the cultural stereotypes about which I grew up learning, was one of the hardest working people I know.

Pacheco is her married surname, (pronounced in Americanized, Rhode Island-ized English, Pa- chee-co) and sometime during her life, she began to ask people to call her Mabel, rather than Belmira. Now, in this chapter of her story, she is Maybelle. I don’t know how it happened. There are signs up all around her tiny room written in forcibly legible print, by my mother. “Take all of your pills, even the big oil pills, mom, for your heart, brain and knees,” on the wall by the sink, and notes to the staff- “Do not mix wet towels in with Maybelle’s laundry, or it will MOLD,” written in marker, underlined. Huh, I thought the other day, sitting on her bed, doing her nails as I usually do, “Maybelle...”

Most of the people in her unit wear wash-and-wear polyester stuff from Wall mart, but my grandmother’s wardrobe still consists mainly of JJill linen and silk, and she still retains a modicum of style. She has always been well-dressed, and, in her forties, made her way up through the ranks at a prominent outlet store in Providence, until she was a clothing buyer, privileged with increasing responsibility, and frequent trips to Manhattan to scope out popular clothing lines. Before that, she’d divorced her abusive alcoholic husband, learned how to drive, taken her GED, and bought a house on a hill, where she lived on one side, and rented out the other.

As a child, and one of four girls, she was very close to her father, who was in real estate, and from him, learned business saaviness and financial responsibility. She saved her money from day one, where at her first job, she sold shoes. Money was to be saved, and to this day, she asks me every single time she sees me if I am making money and if I am putting it in the bank. She became a homemaker after marrying, and took to cleaning, cooking, and homemaking, obsessively. She did not sit down except to eat My mother does not remember being played with, or helped with homework, or spoken to, but she does remember fine Portuguese cooking, ironed underwear and sheets, and sparkling floors.

At the age of 80, Belmira paid off the mortgage in her Cranston duplex, where she lived in perfect feng shui, Horschow Collection-esque milieu. She never had much, but she cared lovingly for all that she owned, and the furniture and possessions were special, and loved. If you were so inclined, you could eat off of the floor. The bed was hospital corners, and fine cotton sheets, towels were french, tri-folded on the racks, and shoes lived neatly in their original boxes. Blinds and walls were regularly, seasonally cleaned, and stylish cookies were baked at Christmas for us, and arranged on a plate next to expensive catalogue mints. My mother would take us, willy-nilly, school shopping at Marshalls, and TJMaxx, and we went once or twice a year, and loaded up our carts with clearance rack items. But for my grandmother, it was never about quantity and always about quality, and she wouldn’t be caught dead in a discount store. She’d always rather have had one or two very fine woolen, silk something or other, from a good “house” like Nordstrom, or Spiegal, or Talbots, or Filenes, than many cheaper items, and the outlet store where she worked, was high-end.

Frugal, poor, and penny-pinching most of her life, she held her head high, had disarmingly expensive taste, (appreciation for fine craftsmanship) and managed somehow, despite the budget, to always look poised, polished, and rich. My grandmother was always proud, and careful, and graceful.

She worked well into her seventies at the outlet store, and after retiring, kept busy with the garden club. Kept busy with cleaning,and helping my acutely frazzled mother, by coming to our house and ironing a large mound of my step father’s omnipresent work shirts every other week. She was a woman who knew not how to rest, how to idle, play, or relax; and she ate with one hand poised next to her plate, chronically tense, and rushed out of her chair to wash the dishes directly after eating. When she visited, she mended our clothes, and cooked, and anxiously criticized my mother’s hair or weight, and evinced obvious disdain for the slightest signs of chaos. Slovenly, we were not, but my step father at the time did little more to help out domestically after work, than put on his vest and hide down in the basement sipping pepsi and tinkering with his hamm radio. If he was to fix us something to eat, it would have to be microwavable, and there would have to be itemized instructions. My mother worked many hours, and was perennially in school for her masters, and then doctorate. There were three of us kids, but my sister and I were close in age and our brother was nine years younger, enabled, and lazy. My grandmother came to the rescue where my sister and I couldn’t always manage.

In assisted living, my grandmother still thinks she is at work, or perhaps that she has returned to work; she calls her fellow dementia floor-mates, “the girls” or woman, and knows no other way, I suppose, to wrap her head around this group living situation. She believes she is back at the outlet store after all these years, and putters around the place looking for tasks. Her same fine clothes, are lovingly laundered and ironed by my mother and me, but they come to us food-stained and, if she had all of her facilities, would be ever scrutinizing the dignity of her appearance, and the matching of fabrics and colors. It doesn’t always work out now, as the aids have to help her dress, and they do not share her same aesthetic. Nearly every time I bring some ironed things over, however, it is pure joy at the perfect ironing job, noted expressively, (she taught me how, but I have completely sworn off ironing for myself) and frequently, she thinks the old clothes are new, and tells me how nice they are.

She is 88 years old now, and still beautiful; more childlike than old, and *always* remembers who I am. She does the best she can, dignified still somehow, and full of compliments when I see her; you’re so beautiful she tells me, and is your hair naturally curly, and your skin is so lovely, she purrs. She is my sweet, self-esteem boosting, hardworking grandmother, who enjoys an ice-cream with me like it is the first time her tongue has tasted pistachio on a sugar cone.

Her name is Maybelle now, a spring flowery name, and she is back at work, but in her mind, it is the best place to be.

2005-12-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

Work and Play: Celebrating American Holidays
Giving Thanks Part 2: Global Thanks and Sarah Hale: The Heroin You Never Learned About in School

One of my favorite Thanksgiving feasts happened while I was in college in Ithaca NY. My friends and I gathered at our friend Rachel’s apartment where we were soon joined by band members of Mr. Bungle, (our friend Rebecca dated Theo the sax player), and the even more eccentric Japanese hardcore band touring with them, Melt Banana. How much do you love that name?

A bunch of us cooked, and there were piles of food, and abundance. I tried to make gravy, but as I’d been a vegetarian for most of my life, did not remember to add flour and water and seasoning to the turkey juices, attempting to make the stuff in a pan sans meat drippings. It was pasty and yucky and there wasn’t much of it. Turned out Mike Patton *really* loved gravy, and kept asking for it, repeatedly forgetting that there A) wasn’t much at all, and B) sucked. But there was a long long line of smiling faces and plenty of beer to make up for the wanton gravy, and everyone was happy, right then and there; and belly laughing. Which brings up the question, is it more important to stick with family even when they make us drained, and fretful, and tearful, than to find other more jovial folks to hang with, who can lift our spirits, give us hope, and inspire our creative parts? I am still trying to figure that out. My turmoil comes from wanting to be present for those in need of me, for family with a capital F, and wanting to be happy myself (the two don’t seem to coincide).. Any day can be a happy Thanksgiving day, I suppose, even if it’s another one with my friends, is the compromise at which I have, at least for now, arrived.

As the holiday approached this year, I began to think about the evolution of tradition, and reflect upon its fabled roots. In first grade, in the seventies, I was taught about the “first” Thanksgiving where, according to legend, Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Natives allegedly shared a harvest feast. The colonists had been at sea for two months, and arrived in Massachusetts to a grim, cold, harsh landscape with pitiful provisions. Nearly half of them died by spring, and their English crops failed to produce much food.

When Squanto, a Wampanoag man, found them, barely surviving, he and his people took pity on them, feeding them through the winter and teaching them about indigenous food sources. In first grade, I was taught about these friendly Indians, and in symbolic celebration, we ate a meal in our classroom with half of the kids dressed in dutch mayflower hats and half in construction paper feather headdresses My teacher didn’t tell us that these native peoples were wary and skeptical of the colonists, having already experienced, for the past century, insolent, cruel European slave traders. But these resilient people were principled, and many believed that giving, and forgiving was the most respectful, honorable thing to do in life.

In early December 1621, the grateful Pilgrims started partying, and didn’t stop for three days, and some of the natives (Prince Edward Winslow’s journal says about ninety of them) joined in. There are only two accounts of the “first” Thanksgiving, one written by Edward Winslow, and the other by William Bradford. I’m thinking we have the whole thing kind of reversed here folks, as the sorry-ass white settlers could not bring themselves to admit that they were completely screwed without the fortunate help from natives. In elementary school, the story sounded like the Pilgrims graciously shared their food with the Wampanoags, but guys, my theory is that the Natives were livin large, and drunk and high on peace pipe enough to include their poor cracker neighbors in the partay. So the white boys went “fowling”, (hunting birds as you could guess), the Wampanoags procured deer.... Evidently, the Wampanoags provided most of the food. There was fish, shellfish, dried fruit, cornmeal, barley beer, venison. So there was a feast, but then we discover, by reading the journals of prominent colonists, a troubling aspect of the popular tale: European colonists did not see the Wampanoags as their equals, but as hedonistic, savage, immoral people sent by god to help them, his chosen people. Within 20 years of their historic kindness, and this powerfully mythologized feast, European disease and domination had decimated the Wampanoags.

Other colonists in Virginia, celebrated harvest festivals as early as 1607, but it is this story of happy Pilgrims kindly sharing with their Indian friends, that became mythologized and expanded into a kind of altruistic festival where race, class, and hardship was temporarily transcended. Without the aid of native people, the Pilgrims would have perished completely, and perhaps they deserved to do so, when we consider that in years to come some 20-30 million native people would be obliterated. Rather than expiring, however, they went on to build a robust nation fertilized by the bones of the native people who found it first. Somehow, there existed harmonious and friendly relations between the first generation colonists and the Wampanoags, led by their leader Massasoit. But soon things went sorely awry, and the subsequent violence, discrimination, dehumanization, and destruction of some 20-30 million native people, is left cleverly out of this happy Thanksgiving story.

Herein lies the irony of the American Thanksgiving myth: native people believed it honorable to give and share, and believed that by doing so there would be enough for all people. Theirs were cultures who took care of their own, tribes who stayed together making sure their people were fed, and sheltered, and healthy, and people who gave without expecting something in return. But our country celebrates this day, in all its artificial splendor, without doing this for one another on a daily basis; without securing health care and food and shelter for all. Cultures based on giving, were systematically overruled by a culture based on selling, and withholding, and judging. Our European ancestors claimed this land with total violent disregard for those who lived here first, in the spirit of freedom, and by virtue of the state of affairs today, revealed their underlying schema of scarcity, hierarchy, contrived currency, and the subsequent ruling belief that money and power are ultimately more important than happiness and equality for all living creatures.

Then came Sarah Hale to save this American holiday from complete and utter disillusion.

Throughout the 1700s, harvest festivals continued here and there, and in 1789, President George Washington issued the first presidential thanksgiving proclamation in honor of the new constitution. During the 19th century, more and more states were observing annual thanksgiving feasts, but its wasn’t until Abraham Lincoln designated the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving day, prompted by the tireless lobbying of Sarah Hale, that all the country celebrated the holiday in unison. Finally, the holiday became a formal, national day of
observance in 1939, under Roosevelt’s presidency. Sarah Hale: resilient, path blazing woman, whose story should be told to mollify the holiday’s oppressive roots...and why didn’t we learn about this woman in first grade?

Ms. Hale found herself widowed and penniless at the age of 34, and with five children to care for, began to support herself with poetry (she wrote that famous nursery rhyme- mary had a little lamb) and sewing. At the age of 39, she published a successful novel and soon went on to serve as the editor of a popular woman's magazine. She worked until she was 89 years old and died at 91, advocating consistently for a national holiday of Thanksgiving to temper the hostilities of America’s civil war. She wrote thousands of letters to the president, and wrote, “There is a deep and moral influence in these periodic seasons of rejoicing, in which whole communities participate. They bring out...the best sympathies in our natures.”

Harvest festivals, and days of giving thanks for miraculous abundance and provision, are ancient, and known throughout the globe. The Greeks honored the grain goddess Demeter in a festival in which married women would fashion leafy shelters, furnished with couches made of plants. On the second day of the Thesmosphoria festival, there would be fasting, and on the third day a huge feast and offerings to Demeter. Romans held a festival in October, honoring the corn goddess Ceres. Ancient Chinese celebrated the harvest festival Chung Ch’ui, on the full moon in the 8th month, which was considered the moon’s birthday. Mooncakes were baked and stamped with the image of a rabbit, which is the picture they saw on the moon. The festival also remembered the victory of Chinese people who had once been taken by enemy armies and rendered hungry and homeless. The few people who had food baked mooncakes with secret messages in them to tell each other when they would counterattack the enemy. The cakes are still eaten in memory of this victory. Hebrew tradition includes the harvest festival called Sukkoth, named for the huts Moses and the Israelites lived in as they wandered in the desert for 40 years trying to reach the promised land. Sukkoth lasts for eight days, and families construct leaf and branch huts adorned with food to honor the memory of their brave ancestors . Egyptians celebrated their harvest festival in honor of Min, the god of vegetation and fertility. And when they harvested their corn, they pretended to cry in order to show the sprit, who they believed to inhabit the corn, that they were conscious of him as they ate the corn in which it lived. In southern India, people hold a harvest festival called Onam, and deliver food to those in need. They decorate their homes with flowers, and light fireworks. A Lithuanian tradition involves creating a boba (old woman) doll out of the last sheaf of grain at harvest time. Keeping the doll until spring is thought to keep the crop’s spirit alive until spring when replanting can commence.

Perhaps if contemporary Americans are to celebrate this holiday with consciousness, awareness, and providence, it would be important to claim a day of gratitude, focusing not on the charged story of the Pilgrims’ first historical feast, but on the persevering heroin of Sarah Hale, and on our ancestors from around the world who recognized that by securing a day for giving thanks, we become better than our instinctive habits to dominate, horde, lie, and take for granted. Perhaps we can remember the powerful effect concerted gratitude can have on us; helping us to transcend the primitive, massive suffering of war, domination, and oppression.

Turns out, the spirit of thanks in universal, and the curious magic of food springing from the earth, moon and sun rising and setting, weather, time, tides, and seasons, is globally respected, feared, and revered.

2005-11-28T23:07:00.000-08:00

Work and Play: Celebrating American Holidays
Giving Thanks: Part 1

My Alzheimer’s grandmother is coming to Thanksgiving dinner. She’s been in assisted living for two and a half years and in the Alzheimer’s unit for a little over a year, this locked unit euphemistically named, Reminiscence. She gets let out today, for a few hours, for the holiday.

We have to eat by one, my mother tells me, so be sure to get cooking in time, and plan accordingly, she warns, you know how you misjudge time and Grandma can’t eat too late, so be sure to be aware of your timing.

There are 4 of us for dinner including me and it feels empty and like it wouldn’t matter if I came to the table in pajamas. I live with my mother but I usually only see her in the morning when she’s hopped up on caffeine and giving me instructions: please let the cats in before dark, but I couldn’t find Chloe, so when you do check her collar (the cats wear battery operated tracking collars and must be checked against homing device each day to make sure the batteries are functioning properly), take out Grandma’s clothes when they’re washed and dry on low, but dry the towels on high, and don’t mix the two because the dryer has moisture sensing technology.

Dick, my mom’s husband, goes to pick up my grandmother from assisted living and when they return we have to eat early because the turkey’s done early. I make green beans with crushed garlic, coriander, olive oil and vinegar, baked sweet potato and apple, mixed salad, my own dressing. There is always Portuguese stuffing made with meat- ground beef, pork, and chourico sausage, my grandmother’s recipe; it is a staple at our family’s holiday meals. At the table I say- I wonder how many turkeys die each year and my mother cuts me off and says, can’t you say something positive?

My mom and I have a fight about the dirty pans, she tells me I should have planned ahead more and I say I’m sorry I said something about the pans, there is plenty of time to clean them, I’m right on schedule, but she’s off and running and she escalates, I’m just telling you, you need to plan ahead and I realize that she sort of whines sometimes. Gets into the whine-mode. I say please stop talking or I’ll walk right out the door. She keeps going, it’s a fight about nothing. She says, Dick,will you please take my mother into the dining room because my grandma starts tinkering and wants to help. She’s driving me crazy, she tells him. He takes her away and they talk about the cat who used to live with my Grandma and now lives here ever since she moved to the Alzheimer’s unit, she says the same things over and over and calls her a him, and Dick makes patient small talk. Take off her shoes when she sits down, my mom calls to him, hey, her shoes are on the hassock she exclaims when she goes into the room to check on them.

I’m being summoned as I try to wash my face and get into clothes and I forgot to make the cream sauce for the onions but the turkey’s getting cold so everyone starts eating without me. It’s 12:30. The whole thing's done and cleaned up by 2. Do you want to come pray with us my mom calls from the dining room, so Dick prays and my grandmother doesn’t hear him and talks loudly and Dick says please be with all those who couldn’t be here today and resolve any differences we might have and bring them back to us which is usually the part each year where my mom cries but this year she’s more hopeful that she’ll have some kind of connection with my younger brother who hasn’t spoken to her for four years. He borrowed a bunch of cash from her to buy a used jeep with me as liaison, mediator. The two of them never saw each other for the transaction, but he scrawled a note a month later that said, thanks mom, you really bailed me out in his sweet dyslexic script. After the prayer, I go back to the cream sauce.

I ask Dick, who do we have differences with- he says, well your brother, and then there’s just people we miss. He misses his daughter Jess who is 18 years old now and just moved in with her boyfriend’s family- she doesn’t even have a room, explains my mom, she sleeps on the couch. Jess’s boyfriend is on his way to Iraq. Jess’s mom is a mean pot head jerk who uses their child support to buy coach purses so Jess has this crazy bad way of handling money now. Her mom moved suddenly and so Jess is living with this family on the couch. Dick offered for her to live with him and my mom but Jess has never liked my mom ever since she dressed her up in braids and little dresses and made her come to church with them every Sunday and made her go to bed at 8pm. She has no structure, my mom would say, and she needs it.

My grandma takes tiny bites I’ve cut up for her, and is wearing someone else’s glasses; has a different pair on practically every time I see her; they’ve taken to labeling them where she lives, and these say “Gerry”. She sits in a chair later, and says, boy am I cross-eyed, can’t see a damn thing, and my mom and I crack up and tell her those aren’t her glasses. She hordes other people’s glasses, stashes shades in her sock drawers, tells me how pretty they are. Twice, she pulls down her pants in the kitchen in preparation for the bathroom which is still a walk away. She throws her snotty tissue in a plant and says her stomach is burning and points to the slight bulge; she’s gained some weight because they feed them pie and pudding and ice cream every night where she lives. She tells me I’ve grown and I take off my shoes to show her how short I am and she hugs me and cries a little on my shoulder, she’s weepy today when my sister calls from Arizona. She used to hold me and now I am holding her.

Dinner is warp speed this year. I am eating my salad when they are eating their meal. I am still eating dinner and the three of them have moved on to pie and coffee. As I finish dinner, Dick is gone, my mom is somewhere, and I’m alone with my grandma trying to stand up, grunting from the pain in her knees and my mom comes back with a plate of pills for her. I ask, how many pills a day does she take, and my mom says, oh about 50, and my Grandma balks and my mom makes her take them, (she is the only one who can make her), and my grandma sits back down with stiff knees; she has aged double triple time since she left her home, she is small, frail, and childlike.

I usually try to avoid speaking to Dick. He is confusing, and sad and doesn’t know what to say to me. I realize today that I feel a vague tiny undercurrent of hostility there. Sadness, and disconnect. Dick was on the phone with Jess the other day, he tells us, and her new mini doberman puppy barked and she told someone to hit it. Tell her not to hit animals, my mom shrieks, did you tell her?! I did, Dick says, but I don’t think she really listened. She wants animals to make up for the affection she craves, but if they don’t do what she wants, she gets angry, he says. Dick and I talk about Iraq for a bit. My grandma is silent and concentrating, and older than she was a month ago. I haven’t been visiting her as much because it rips my heart out and she misses me. She used to have Thanksgiving dinner at her house every year; it smelled heavenly, like roasted meat, onions, fresh air, and coco chanel. She was a gifted cook. And she’d get a boston cream cake for my mom and we’d sing happy birthday early, my mother’s birthday is on December 6th. Maybe I should have gotten her a cake this year.

With my mother there is almost always some kind of trauma and a desperate need to micromanage the situation; she rushes over to Dick putting away china and chides him for something or other and asks him in a squeaky voice if he mixed silver with stainless in the dishwasher and he complies, and stays vigilant to her tweaking of everything around her.

My grandmother wants to leave at this moment, and then wonders where she’s going, and wants to stay and my mom yells, because her hearing is going too, you’re going back to your home and you’re going to eat supper there- who will cook supper my grandmother asks, the chef my mom answers, the what asks grandma, and the explanation takes ten minutes and ends in confusion.

We are supposed to gather as family as be thankful, but we are scattered, and not talking, and the only moments of laughter are at my grandmother burping down pills with the threat of arthritis and failing memory if she doesn’t take them. The pills work if she takes them, but they are big and hard to swallow and the staff at her residence don’t make her and every month there is a table full of returned pills my mother has to sort and return to bottles and recount and prepare in boxes labeled with the date and time.

We are a family of ghosts and I am the only child present anymore; my sister’s out of state and brother given up completely. My mom has gone to take my grandma back to assisted living, Dick comes downstairs where I am doing yoga and says, your mom just called and tried to reach your cell phone; she wants you to call your brother and wish him happy Thanksgiving and tell him his mother misses him. Why doesn’t she do that herself I ask, and he says I don’t know and turns around to go back upstairs. I leave a message for my brother, but he doesn’t call me back.

Gratitude is the antidote to depression, I believe.

Despite the sadness of this day, I am grateful for health, and food, and shelter, and talent; the power to think, read, write, reflect, appreciate music, see art, make art. I am grateful for books, and films, and taste, and clothes that fit, and my morning grapefruit, and petting cats. For my little niece, and for my sister’s conscious parenting. For the sweet first snow which happened today, for the warm wood stove, for my soft pillow, my car, my clients, my future, for thin early winter sunlight, for opportunity. I am thankful I’m not at war, weeping in the trenches, and not being tortured, or in imminent danger. I am grateful I can see, and walk, and laugh, and call people on my phone, and flush the toilet, and sleep. My mother used to say to us when we were complaining about something banal and insignificant- well at least you have all your arms and legs. So yes mom, I am seriously thankful for my limbs. I am thankful to be able to get into downward dog, and run, and dance. I am thankful for MUSIC, oh god how I love it, and art, and poetry. I am thankful for my friends.

My friend Ian calls me later and rescues me from this folding in on myself; comes over with his quiet, sad girlfriend to take us out for a beer. Ian and I talk animatedly and finally there are some moments of cheer today. But his girlfriend feels left out I think, and she hands him her beer and wants to go but doesn’t say that; I ask her, are you tired, do you want to go and she shrugs and looks at Ian, well I’m not driving she says. That means yes. This is a day of strained communication. Why is there a sense of urgency about this traditional day, this feast, folks rushing to soup- kitchen lines to hand out pumpkin pie, as if on this day it is more important to eat, than the other 364? Is it the miracle of human transcendence to be thankful even when your home blew up or went out to sea and your humming city of new orleans washed away and your family floated out on a tsunami and you went to jail and lost your legs or sight or job or dignity? Yesterday I drove by the Concord State Prison and wondered what the Thanksgiving meal would be in there today: canned cranberry sauce, dry turkey, instant mashed potatoes?

I miss my boyfriend who is with his happy big family drinking wine and telling stories at their big old home in Newton today, and I miss my friends who live far away. I miss years when we had 10 people around the table and the years we went to my boyfriend’s at the time, house and played cards after dinner and laughed. I miss my sister and brother and wish we were all together.

Is it the point then; the deeper, conscious choice, to give thanks in the face of loneliness, disappointment, and grief, to give thanks when it’s not so easy to do so, to find hundreds of things we take for granted every day? To be thankful yet, for the tenderly strange family we have been born into, for all its quirks, abuses, and nuances?

It is up to us, I determine today, to find shafts of light in the shadow, diamonds in the coal, jokes in the ways of our jelly-brained elders, and delicate treasure buried right below the surface.

2005-11-16T21:18:00.000-08:00

Dragon

Mickey's father grew up on a dirt floor, his father a coal miner. Pennsylvania was a sullen state, the town glistening black as miners' hands after all day working. And then his family moved to New York. He scrubs pots badly. Leaves a thin film which collects on top of the bleach water. Acne-jawed and tatooed, he takes forever to put the clean ones away while I keep getting more piles; rinsing, submerging, handing them over. Our hands are numb white pickles. His mother works here too, on different days. She's a dishwasher like me, Mickey says.

When we've washed a pile and there's nothing else for now, he explains the square-headed dragon on his arm. A girl did it free-hand. I take a look. It's pretty good. Another pile comes in on a cart. One of my brother's a colored, he mumbles. Born from my mother's affair. Oh, is all I say. He's got four other siblings, and his muscles are loose strings. The dishroom sings low around us while we talk.

He says, I listen to almost all kinds of music, yeah, I listen to almost anything. Me too I say, but the only country music I'll listen to is Lucinda Willams, Hank Williams, Bonnie Rait, and Johnny Cash. Don't like metal much either. His face is kind, and he talks in shudders, starting and stopping.

Kids at school treated me bad when they found out my brother's colored, he says, dipping cheap pots in grease water with careless movements. It is 1992 and we are in the dishroom of a dining hall at a prominant univerity and I go to school here and he says colored, but I just say, yeah, prejudice makes no sense. I lean on a sink in my dirty white shirt and listen, and nod. He tells me he wants to go to music tech school. But I hate school, he says. He is going to community college and taking all of the easiest classes. I don't sleep very well at night, he tells me, ponytail resting stiffly on his spine. I can only fall asleep to hardcore, he adds.

We're poor, but my uncle's rich cuz he sells drugs, he says, looking at me sideways. My father's got some tumor from his last job at a factory, but they say they're not liable so he collects social security. We're sweating under our paper hats. My uncle doesn't give a shit about nobody, he says. His wife went crazy from cocaine, but he doesn't do drugs, just sells them. Told his kids that his wife left them. He's rich. He goes to Sweden and stuff.

We keep washing; chocolate sauce, tomato, salad dressing mingling together on the bottom of the sink.

When break is called he sits alone eating the same foods we were just washing out of pots, he sits there looking rough, serious. I look at him while filling my glass of milk but I need a cigarette and find my friend sneaking out to have one. Mickey punches out a few minutes early.

It's late, but there's more to do, and as I listen to the whirring dishroom, I fill the sink one last time. Here on the shiny turquoise floor, the last garbage flecks dry in hot bright air.

2005-11-10T15:10:00.000-08:00

Chutes and Ladders

When it comes to selling a service, offering a class, and marketing your skill, your art, your workshop or restaurant, or invention, one is met with the age-old philosophical conundrum: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to witness its descent- does it make a noise?

If I open my restaurant and no one eats there is it really a restaurant, and if I make a painting and no one buys it, am I an artist? My friend Sarah told me once that I wasn't a writer if I hadn't published and I spared her the rude retort- so are you a potter if no one buys your mugs? How can we be our own measuring sticks for success, when the world around us is providing weak erratic feedback, like a thready pulse, and how can we learn to approve of ourselves when the world is hurling lemons and we are scrambling for sugar for the proverbial lemonade?

I began doing yoga to handle the pile of chronic grief I carry on my head, and I began doing it more often when, three years ago, my boyfriend Jason left me in what I thought at the time was an abrupt manner, scratching up all of these shallowly buried feelings of abandonment, and desperation. I was terrified and antagonized with more than the usual dose of cerebral tumult, haunted by a loudly chattering mind. There is a sacred yogic text written by Patanjali in 5000 B.C. called Sutras- sutra meaning thread- and it is a book of wise aphorisms, proverbs, and philosophy. The second sutra says: "Yogas Citta VrittI Nirodha": The restaint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga. So. Yeah, I went to classes to focus graciously on one sweaty difficult asana at a time to quell the anxious chattering mind. I do it because it is far more than a physical endeavor. "There is a Sanskrit saying, 'Mana eva manushyanam karanam bandha mokshayoho- As the mind, so the man; bondage or liberation are in your own mind.' If you feel bound, you are bound, if you feel liberated, you are liberated. Things outside neither bind nor liberate you; only your attitude towards them does that." Sounds good.

I began to teach yoga because I wanted to spread the goodness. To show people that we can be our own healers, and that we can free our muscles, bones, skins, glands, nerves, heart, and head. I believe it works, but on one has been coming to my classes. To be fair, I frequently focus on the negative and choose to hightlight my failings in all circumstances in alignment with my junky sense of self- esteem but here- I've only taught a handful of classes. But I care. I prepare readings for each class to read before Sivasana, I study, I do my own practice. One class is at noon on friday and the woman who runs the studio has done zero advertizing. Now she has moved to a busier location and maybe it will be different. I have a few really loyal students but I think friday at noon is a hard day and time to sell. And then- I did the work of starting a beginner class to accomadate interested massage therapy clients. I emailed them, and found a studio in the town where they live, and carefully wrote a description and marketed myself as well as I could and on the first day only one woman showed up and she wasn't one of my clients. Two people came to my second class, one woman was my client and one my mother. Yesterday the studio owner told me she was cancelling it because "no one was talking about it" and "she thought I had a following" and she couldn't afford to run the class and she knows when to cut her losses. Ok- and she also said she'd like to run it in January. It is mid-session and holiday time so I suppose she's right, but I feel like maybe I'm not good. In January I will be starting classes at another studio and was met with enthusiasm there. It will take time. I have the patience for it actually, I just don't enjoy the pressure of money- I am not teaching for the money and yet, we HAVE to play the game. I guess. I want to teach busy yoga classes and I want people to like me and I want to be skilled, and successful, and leave the world a better place than it was before I was born. That woma's email bummed me out majorly, dude. She cancelled my class becuase money is the *most* important thing for her. Someday I'd like to live off the grid, grow my own food, adopt a kid, and take in loads of needy animals. I don't want to work for anyone else anymore!!!! I can work with people, yes, but I'm so damn tired of this, of this bumping into other poeple's egos and wierdnesses, and money nueroses. Fuck this. I am having a day of FUCK THIS.

I don't watch the news on purpose. I listen to NPR every time I'm in my car which is often, and I listen to the BBC, but I don't watch news. Which makes the fact that I caught a brief sound-bite about a man who has been slowly poisoning his wife with anti-freeze in order to benefit from her life-insurance policy, this morning on television, ironic. I am PMS to boot. And I don't feel very patriotic.

Life is a game of chutes and ladders, my boyfriend says. When his family, who had plenty of money and lost much of it abruptly, needed groceries, his mother was forced to be creative. She did the usualy lowley stuff, like cleaning her neighbors toilets. And, as she was a practicing witch, she shut herself in their kitchen, kicked everyone out of the house, and brewed magical love potion which she sold in beautiful little glass containers. And she sold her homeade wedding cookies. You know- those melty little almond confectioner sugar balls of yumminess? One day, she was rejected from a popular store and went away without a sale. So her son went into the store the next day and casually asked the owner if they carried wedding cookies. She said- that is so strange- no I don't actually. Too bad he said, everyone loves wedding cookies, they are so delicious. The next day his mother got a call. The cookies were a big hit.

Did any guys go to your yoga class he asked me? No, I said. Too bad he said, I could have called that Cheryl, and told her what a wonderful class Erin offered the other day. Are the cookies good if no one eats them, and am I still a yoga teacher if no one comes to my class? WE MUST BE OUR BIGGEST ADVOCATES. We must belive in our art and our skills in some way, whatever it takes. I heard that J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter author, was rejected by *every* publisher in London. rejection is no reflection is my bumper sticker of the day. Here's whatt Goethe says:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans-- that moment one definitely commits oneself then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occured. A whole sream of events issues from the decision, raising in ones favor all manner of unforseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius power and magic in it."

2005-10-31T20:05:00.000-08:00

Work and Play:
Celebrating American Holidays; Mictecacihuatl versus Samhain

I often wonder if we know what we are celebrating when our kids traipse around in goblin suits and mummy gear; when going door to door as ketchup bottles, vampires, and sexy nurses is suddenly acceptable for one lone night of the year. I live in New England. We are intensely private and frequently holed up in our homes in front of televisions. We are antisocial, and guarded, and suspicious. The other day, my boyfriend and I rode his handmade, purple, semi-recumbant bike on the bike path in Arlington, MA. The bike is terrifically designed, with a fringe leather back seat for me, and sissy bar; we rode in fuzzy hats and giant sunglasses, and only 2 or 3 out of 50 people even looked twice, never mind commented on it. You're supposed to look the other way around here, you're supposed to give people their silent right to be however strange they want to be, and politically correctly pretend to ignore them. Last year, on the same path, I met a ragged, confused old man who who was obviously lost and likely afflicted with Alzheimer's or dementia. I helped him find his way to Mass ave, but I did not call the police, and to this day I regret it. I don't want to ignore people, but customs have this persistent way of leaking in... We don't stop for motorists on the side of the road, and we don't mention our professor's new hair color. There is an unspoken code of ethics here, a way of being left alone and assuming that all others, even those in obvious need, or riding really cool art bikes, want this as well. On Halloween, however, it is perfectly acceptable to walk right up your neighbor's pristinely landscaped front walk, and take candy from a basket in their doorway, to brazenly ring doorbells, to make noise and be outside, and talk to each other; there is brief community, and there is freedom to cut loose, and paint your face, and be someone else.

I asked a friend who is a grandmother and whose grandkids come to her house for Halloween to trick-or-treat in her neighborhood, if she knew why we do what we do on Halloween. She is in her 70's and she didn't know, and I wondered why she. like so many others, isn't curious about our customs, if she is the norm.

Halloween is based on the 2000 year old Celtic custom of Samhain (pronounced sow-in and the name for the Lord of Death), a pagan holiday centered around the new year, beginning for them on November 1st. This being a volitile time of ending and beginning, of harvest and preparation for a new cycle, they believed that the lines between life and death were blurred and open at this juncture, and that spirits roamed the earth. For wandering sprits of the dead, they placed treats outside on doorstoops as offerings, wore masks to scare off roaming ghouls and ghosts, and burned pyres to sacrifice crops and animals, ensuring abundance for the following year. Druids made predictions, nature gods wielded their power, and the natural world was mysterious and perilous, and frought with superstition.

Then Romans conquered the Celts, who lived in tribes in Ireland, Scotland, Whales, and Brittany; and created a strange hybrid celebration including centerpieces created out of apples and nuts for Pomona, Roman goddess of the orchards. Randomly or more likely not, in 835, Pope Gregory IV moved the celebration for all the martyrs and saints to honor all those who died contributing to the Catholic community at large, from May 13 to November 1, and the night before this holiday became known as All Hallow’s Even or “holy evening.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that through the communion of saints “a perennial link of charity exists between the faithful who have already reached their heavenly home, those who are expiating their sins in purgatory and those who are still pilgrims on earth. Between them there is, too, an abundant exchange of all good things” (#1475). Perhaps Pope Gregory acted on behalf of all Christians who worried about their pantheistic counterculture, and moved All Saints Day to November 2nd to counteract this energetic Pagan holiday.

The custom of going door-to-door to collect treats began in Ireland hundreds of years ago when groups of farmers went door-to-door collecting food and materials for a village feast and bonfire. Those who gave were promised prosperity; those who did not received threats of bad luck. When an influx of Irish Catholic immigrants came to the United States in the 1800s, the custom of trick-or-treating came with them. The same folks also carved hollowed-out turnips and lit them from within with candles to ward off evil spirits, and upon arriving in the U.S, discovered pumpkins (um, how do you fit a candle in a turnip?). The name Jack-o-lantern come from legend of an Irishman named Jack who was forced to roam the earth with only a burning coal inside a pumpkin to light his way because he had never performed a single selfless act throughout his life. Some punishment...

Somehow, along the way the night of contemporary Halloween became the strange permutation that is is today, neither Pagan or Christian, neither here nor there, a mixed-up combination of traditions replete with burlesque, and sexuality; a rebellion against repression and codes of acceptable conduct, a night to push through social and sexual barriers, a night to talk to neighbors and get a shitload of free candy.

At the same time, in early November, our friends in Mexico are similarly, but more consciously and deliberatively pondering and celebrating life and death at Dia de Los Muertos, Day of the Dead. I like this Holiday better, because it is less fear-based, and more positive and respectful; more about honoring, less about warding-off, less talk of evil spirits, more gratitude for beloved ancestry. There is, deeply embedded in this custom, an acceptance of death as incubator of life, as necessary component of natural cycles... This holiday can be traced to Mesoamerican native traditions, such as the festivities held during the Aztec month of Miccailhuitontli, ritually presided by the "Lady of the Dead" (Mictecacihuatl), and dedicated to children and the dead. In the Aztec calendar, this ritual fell roughly at the end of the Gregorian month of July and the beginning of August, but in the postconquest era it was moved by Spanish priests so that it coincided with the Christian holiday of All Hallows Eve (in Spanish: "Día de Todos Santos.") Following suit to Pope Gregory's maneuverings, there was an effort to transform the observance from profanely pagan, to morally correct Christian, causing modern Mexicans to celebrate the day of the dead during the first two days of November, rather than at the beginning of summer. Like Halloween, it is a blend of ancient aboriginal, native, and contemporary Christian customs.

During Dia de los Muertes, families welcome their dead back into their homes, and visit family graves, decorating them with flowers, picnicing and socializing at graveyards, believing that the souls of the dead are all around them. They honor deceased by telling stories about them, and eat thoughtfully prepared feasts of meat dishes in spicy sauces, chocolate beverages, cookies, sugary candies shaped like animals or skulls, and a special egg-batter bread ("pan de muerto," or bread of the dead). Gravesites and family altars are profusely decorated with flowers (primarily large, bright flowers such as marigolds and chrysanthemums), and adorned with religious amulets and offerings of food, cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. Families create altars decorated with items important and cherished by departed ones, such as photographs, diplomas, and clothing, to entice the dead and assure that their souls will return to take part in the remembrance. In traditional settings, typically found only in native communities, the path from the street to the altar is actually strewn with petals to guide the returning soul to its altar and the bosom of the family. It is warm, and social, and colorful, and there is abundant food, drink and chatter.

In this way the dead are venerable, repected, beloved, and fondly remembered. I can relate to this.

If given a choice, I would rather participate in this warm, loving tradition of rememberance, over the fearful, evil-spirit-based Northern European tribal custom, turned awkwardly Christian, of Halloween any day. And yet I live here in America, and if I am still living here when I have children, will have to make this weird Holiday my own, my family's own.

If I want to participate at all, then I will do so consciously, and deliberately, with awareness, and joy.

2005-10-29T22:02:00.000-07:00

Friend with an Art Path

Another friend- who is I believe, intensely aligned with me and my beliefs, and whom I wish I saw more often, wrote this. He is on an art path, he is multiple-genre gifted, and kind, and solid, and silly, and curious. He is commenting on my piece about the surrendering, accepting position on my friend the Brazilian cleaning woman.

"(this) makes me think of how some people sing while they work, to take their minds off of their sadness.

I don't recall where I read about this one person, in particular-- a lady. Probably also a cleaning lady of sorts. It turns out that this lady had lost all of her family members to wartime. And, when asked to reflect on her singing during an interview, she said that it takes her mind off of her terrible pain. That singing dulls the pain. And, by singing, she manages to survive. Day by day. Sponge by sponge. Vibration by vibration.

The weird thing is that this she seemed so serene! So sometimes I, who can't really sing at all, sing to bring my mind to a calmer, more focussed place.

Yogic chanting is is all about this idea. How to allow oneself to be in the present moment as much as is humanly possible. To align all of the energy centers in the body with sound.

And yet, the human is always what gets us, isn't it? You should be singing, Erin! Whenever you get the chance. And you shouldn't care who's listening. I used to enjoy hearing you sing, even before I knew who you were. Down in the Tjaden printing studio. You owe it to yourself to be joyful, even when you are down!

Love,
-James

2005-10-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

Art Has No Path

Here is what one of my oldest friends, (we met when we were 14 years old) said in response to my blog. My comments will follow when I have energy to address this. Suffice to say, I read this with jaw ajar:

"sounds like a hard year! i have often thought about work -- and here's my two cents: You may not like any given job you have, but if you pick a "career" then you'll rise to the level where you do more of the stuff you like and less of the stuff you don't like. It's finding something with a path that's hard. Art has no path -- so it will never yield a happy, relaxed result. Even if you write a book and sell a million copies you'll be concerned that the next one will be a failure. A career is like a diploma -- once you reach various plateaus you can relax, knowing you have reached a certain level. The only thing about the career view is that you can't give up...you keep at it, through boredom and realize that there's a next step to conquer.

And then you plan out gallery openings, book readings, etc.

My friend Ian needs someone to help him market his restaurant. Good $, in Needham, and you might find that interesting...could be a start in a marketing career (which you would do very well in, I think.) Let me know if you're interested. :)"

2005-10-28T01:07:00.000-07:00

A Story of Survival

Green girl went walking up a hill, down a slope, through a stream, across a glacier, around the sun, and over a moon.

She got wet, cold, and burned in the hot light which crept through canyon cracks. She got hungry and ate what was in her sack, and when it ran out, had to find food and drink in mysterious ways. She smelled things to see if they were poisonous, cupped her hand to streams, and sipped dew off leaves. Chopped through brush, waded through rivers, met her maych in wind and critters. Nothing could stop her. She had extraordinarily good hearing and strong feet to grip the earth, big square hands to touch things in earnest, and the nose of a wolf.

Creatures led her when the light grew dim and sounds of creeks and wind plotted her course. She had a few trusty tools, and when she forgot where she was going, she retraced her steps by the fire with a charred stick on the dirt.

She wrote her life when there was no one to talk to, and she sang. Hummed to sleep, hummed awake, gospel in the morning after it rained, a sweet slow chant in the afternoon, a hymn sometimes; in places where it echoed she'd let it wash out of her waterfall lungs with vengeance, each foot a different note.

If she felt tired on her journey she sang and walked and then the walk became a leaping and the leaping a jog and the jog a dance. With the timber and power of a chiming chorus, her song became a whole body shaking, a whirling dervish dance, the dance of a girl with stories in her skin, the dance of a girl with tales strung together like maraca beads, beautiful on their musical strand.

2005-10-27T22:38:00.000-07:00

Helen Cixous on Writing:

"In God's place I have, as a friend to my alarms, both sides of a piece of paper. Under the hours' whistling, I dream of the mystery of the leaf, my impoverished god. We too. we are both sides my love, and the back side is the front, and I, too, am
indissociably back and front. When I write I never know which side I'm on, if it's mine or yours, if I'm leaving or if you're leaving in me, if I'm writing on you, or if you're writing on me; constantly I twist and turn.

Without the leaf of paper to listen to me, I couldn't live through this Saturday. Leaf, I love you....Slight, infinite creature, tricky marvel of nature, an everything that seems like nothing, I write to you beneath the hours' wind. I complain to you and
I feel...a joy of extreme curiosity. Because a world is revealed to me, and in its hoarse and apparently inarticulate rages, by dint of paying attention, I discern music.

All it takes is paying attention, not letting go of the winds and clouds in your head, all it takes is not
letting go of the leaf of paper, for visions to emerge from chaos..."

2005-10-27T09:15:00.000-07:00

Thwarted Genius, or Professional Flounderer?

I'm receiving unemployment benefits for the second time in my life and opened a letter yesterday instructing me to attend a Career Center Seminar at one of their One-Stop Career Centers by 11/11/05. "Failure to attend the seminar", they told me, "within the time frame specified, may cause a delay in payment or loss of weekly Unemployment Insurance Benefits...The Career Center Seminar will provide useful tools to help you better understand today's job market and create a job search activity plan. You will also learn about services that can help you with your job search- such as workshops, computer access to job listings, and support groups."

How is today's job market? I wouldn't know. For the last few years I've worked as a massage therapist and now yoga teacher. I've managed to stay away from the dreaded task of cruising want-ads and tweaking my resume on Monster.com. It hurts my brain to think of it. And yet, maybe I should be doing that since BEING a bodyworker isn't the right fit either, perhaps I should look for an editing job or something...I went into this field because I thought it would be a nice contributing thing to to and palatable, until I did what I *really* wanted to do. I am living in transition, existing in that shifty in-between space, hovering in the means-to-an-end place where this is what I do UNTIL I do what I really want to do. But does that work? That keep-your-day-job-and-do-your-real-work-at-night kind of thing? For two years I've been working full time as a bodyworker and I'm no closer to my goals. My goals: to make a living at writing, art, to create, conceptualize, make sense of the world, to have studio space, to make installation art, to "Be in love with my life" like Jack Kerourac says. To exist in real time, to emerge from the murky safety of fantasy, to live my dreams. But It is safer to dream than actualize; it is safe from failure, success, risk--and yet it isn't really. The in between place is where you stay, gripping the diving board with white toes, afraid to dive, cleanched and tight and afraid of fear itself.

I will go to the career seminar for the experience of it, after all, everything is fodder, every experience a contribution to my art, (objectification as coping mechanism? Another chapter). I will go in order to *write* about it, but truth is, I'm not looking for a job. Not a real job. God no. I'm ready to retire ya'll. But I'm busting my ass trying to reach all of my clients from Wellspace, the now completely twisted wellness center turned on its ass with new management, and trying to procure yoga classes. I'm seeing clients in their homes, making calls, loving and fearing my erratic schedule. And all of this takes time. Emails, promotion, marketing. My friend Lisa, who was a big twelve-stepper, but still drank anyway, said "Act As If". So Lisa, I'm trying. Acting as if I believe in my teaching ability even though I am chronically wracked with anxiety during my yoga classes and solid in my massage therapy techniques even though I commonly feel completely talentless while doing bodywork. So I did it. I just made an appointment with the Career Center of North Central Mass for 2pm on Halloween day. Double whammy-wierd, always wierd energy that day...this will be great.

Sometimes I just feel like a whiney, privelaged, self-indulgent educated white-girl-poser pretending to be resourceless and mooching off the sytem for my $323 a week in unemployment checks. On the other hand I feel confused and creative and not-belonging in the formulaic system of working for a living; wandering the meta-scape of identity crisis, of societal pressure and money and just generally tripping-out here folks. Dreamt last night of rifling through my boss's car for clothing, saying wait so she wouldn't drive away, bundling it into my arms and noticing clothing on the ground, scattered under the car, in the back seat, scrambling to retrieve it; this metaphor for self, image, apearance.

I have a brain, I have ideas, I have BFA from Cornell, and who cares? Reminds me of the shoe dreams: A few years ago I had a smattering of them; looking for my shoes in an enormous pile of them, leaving bloody footprints, trying to fit into too-small shoes like Cindarella's sisters. The dreams are, I believe obviously about fitting in, about being grouded, about searching for stability, finding authenticity, seaking identity. So now clothes. Still in pursuit of my true-ness, authenticity, my image, my expression, my place in the world, my *look*. Clothing is costume after all, and like it or not, we are making statements about ourselves each day with what we put on our backs, even if it is to say I don't care what I look like.

But I digress.

Being unemployed brings up feelings: despair, confusion, anxiety, freedom, concern, worry, a sweet, playing-hookey moment followed quickly by a swell of how am I going to pay the bills, stomach-lurching fear. Is America still the land of Milk and Honey? Recently I watched the film Crash. Intensely sad, real, and well made, but I felt as hopeless as I did when, years ago, I watched Spike Lee's - Do the Right Thing. Crash is a finely crafted tale of racism and judgmentalism, of immigrants moving miles away from what they know to make a buck here in this reputably desirable country. It is the weaving together of multiple stories and characters with less than six degrees of separation, who are all afraid in their own ways; afraid of the molesting white cop abusing his power, afraid for their dying fathers and drugging sons, suspicious of the latino locksmith, trembling for their little girl hiding under the bed from gunshot sounds, of the dealer to whom they sell stolen SUVS, of intruders and danger and of being called Saudi and Arab when really they are Persian, of being misunderstood, of being called ragheads and chinks and niggers and crackers-- OF BEING MISUNDERSTOOD. Immigrants trying to make it here, anypne trying to make it here, trying to find a way to put good food on the table, to help relatives back home in Brazil, Korea, Croatia; trying to squeeze drops from this historically economically booming, soaking wet dishrag of a country , wringing out those wealthy drops of liquid gold..we all want the same thing. DUH! I'm yelling this inside!

We all want to be understood, to exist, to have safety and love, food, shelter, freedom of expression; basic needs here people, basic.

2005-10-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

How To Avoid Your True Work: Distraction, Procrastination, and Crippling Perfectionism

Step 1: Stay in your pajamas, don't leave the house, and neurotically search Ebay for the perfect campus boots and faux fur full length coat. Make Ebay bidding a priority; make sure you're by your computer when the bid for the Vintage Retro Brown Velour Purse with Bakelite Handles is up at 5:47pm. Listen to your heart pound as you've been outbid on the perfectly refined 60's houndstouth coat size small, and sigh as you lose when the auction ends and you're no closer to fulfillment. Make your life revolve around packages arriving daily in the mailbox since you came back from Burning Man and quit/lost your job in early September. You were working as a massage therapist at a wellness center in Cambridge, MA, a mellow cambridgey holistic center, which is exactly the environment you wanted to be in for this type of work, and it was ok for 10 months. Then these two brazen, elitist, Havard MBA graduates with Daddy's money took over last January and the place got petty and strange, and this girl tattled on you for talking on your cell phone in the back hall in order to kiss up to (this is what you call him now- he's actually like a very twisted Mr. Rogers gone wrong- slicked hair, sweater, lilting, creepy voice) The Frog. Now that the Frog took over, there are a whole host of new rules, such as refraining from talking on cell phones in public spaces, limiting their use to the lunch room and treatment rooms, fine, ok. Since you and your boyfriend are *perpetually* fighting, you fled to the back hall stairway (no clients use this stairway) for privacy. This little bitch co-worker tattled on you and thus began 7 more months of uncomfortable employment there replete with a series of peculiarly petty complaints about your existence, such as, even though you were in strict accordance to current dress code laws, the way you dress. Your eating disorders resurfaced, and you dreaded every day, which was familiar really, because you've never liked (this is actually true and not an exageration as you might have expected) your job. Mercifully, the place closed for renovations so that it could turn into an LA style-flowing-waterfalls-in-the-waiting-area-organic-lunch-cafe-with-a-concierge-at-the-desk-and-20 dollar drop-in yoga classes type of place, while you were away at Burning Man, out in the desert being awestruck by all of the wonderful art, the collective effort to be there, the temporary socialistic community spirit, fully free, expressing themselves at this 24 hour party, and by the sexy, constumey, ballsy, beautiful looks out there, so you came home to search for faux fur boots on Ebay, and a monster was created.

You suddenly had to get a new look, you had to find yourself again, to reinvent yourself, and each day, painfully, anxiously, your life began flashing before your eyes; you woke up terrified that you will amount to nothing, and that you and your work are one and the same; brilliantly constructed fantasy, but nothing more. The center is still closed, and you decided you wouldn't go back when it opens, and you are actually doing better now, financially, emotionally, than when you worked for The Frog. You're doing housecalls and making more money even though you schlep this huge massage table all about, and do laundry. You're teaching yoga, and getting on your yoga soapbox, and, now that you have so much more free time, you SHOULD be writing, you WANT to be writing, but you're not really, and it's terrifying in a sharp, what-have-I-done-with-32-years-on-this-planet, kind of way. So you keep buying things to wear. you fantasize about having fabulous places to go in them, like art openings, and book readings, and poetry slams, and concerts, and lectures, and out dancing. You want to ballroom dance, but you and your boyfriend fight and cry and, this is his analysis, stay nice and safely away from intimacy. You get things in the mail and some things fit, but some things are terribly dissapointing. Some things briefly quell the growing sense of dread that you are incapable of intimacy with your boyfriend of nearly two years, and that you are stuck and scared and going nowhere. You open that nice package and for 5 minutes that purple rayon blend vintage blazer with pearl buttons, and those totally authentic, mit, made-in-italy white leather 60's platform boots, take you away from fearing the state of your life, from the reality of merely wishing you were a writer, instead of actually being one, seeing now that you are staunchly lodged in fantasy about your true calling, rather than bringing it to fruition, that you are giving in to the fear.

Step 2: Give in to The Fear: this amorphous fear is webby and non-descript, but gripping. It is exactly like a spider-web in texture, sticky, entrapping, glistening in moonlight. The fear may be that you won't be perfect. That you will, drumroll and spotlight please, FAIL! (Won't it be wonderful when you don't care about that anymore?) Or perhaps that you will be too perfect. That you will sit down to tell your story and forget the details and be faced with the prospect of rifling through old journals to conjure up the ghosts of your stories about work. Here is where writing gets twisted: Most of us want to forget unsavory past events like, the subject I'm so sickly fascinated with, old crappy, unfulfilling and maybe even abusive jobs. So we do. We get fired and get tanked on G and T's and glug it down with extra limes. We forget on purpose. Being a writer is, at times, exactly like being a gravedigger. Have to get the real story. Have to tell it, have to *remember* it, in all its sordid details, ideally. There is this push and pull, this kid yanking on its mother's arm saying, let's go, and this mother rooting to her spot, staring, concentrating like a bottlenecker driving by an accident scene.

You are afraid that you will tell people at parties that you are a writer and go home and not write. But you will write brilliantly in your head. It is safe there, and it is a warm, riskless, ruminating little party. With a hangover. A party that seemed fun at the time. You are afraid that you will not say what you really mean, that you type too slowly and think too mudily, that these great ideas of yours get murky resolution on the page, get served up like a greasy diner meal with messy hashbrowns when really what you'd hoped for was a nice clean soup and salad. So you write in your head and stay away from the Blog, and you should stay away because it's too hard to make it real, and it't too hard to be good, OR bad.

Step 3: Take up bad habits like smoking cigarettes, eating cookies, browsing for ponchos and cowboy boots and slouchy leather bags getting all too familiar with terms like NWT, MOD, EMO, and BOHO, and all too fed up with references to Kate (Hudson?) Sienna (Miller?) , Jessica (Simpson) and Carrie (Bradshaw). Get no closer to your dream and get right on the ferris wheel of avoidance, guilt, avoidance, more guilt, and good reasons to eat never ending bowls of cereal. A great seductress avoidance is, offering sexy, alluring, charming, temporarily safe little hiding spots right here, isn't it great, we have 10 whole responsibility-free minutes? And socially isolate. Don't call your friends back, even if you want to, because it's too hard, and you're ashamed of yourself, and it takes a ton of energy to call, drive to houses, make plans, smile, and answer questions. Stay inside, rent movies, and sequester. You don't even have to take a shower.

Step 4: Get totally fed up with this, and deeply sorry that you said Fuck You to your boyfriend last night on the phone when he asked if you lacked motivation and was this why you weren't writing, and take baby steps to correct the situation. At least wiggle a toe in your shoe. Say your sorry about five more times for saying fuck you, and then just fuckin write. Just do it anyway even though you're petrified and really good at self-flaggelation. Remember that you love this, actually, for some sick reason, and that there is nothing like the satisfaction of seeing your words on the screen, on the paper, and maybe one day, in a book. Keep thinking about death. No seriously, watch Six Feet Under episodes on DVD (why'd they stop running that brilliant program?) and think about how most of us never know when our last day on earth will be, acquire a healthy sense of urgency. Remind yourself that this is it (that you're aware of at least), that this is your life and you can be afraid, but do it anyway goddammit, that books don't write themselves. Remember that great E.L Doctorow quote "Writing a novel is like driving at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." Remind yourself that the only way you'll feel better is to sit down and write, right through the fear and dread, that avoiding will only make it worse, and facing this will set you free at last. Now that you have Tivo, which is one of the best invetions on earth, to date, and time on your hands, you watch Oprah, like every other normal suburban housewife. She said something good yesterday. She said, courage is being afraid and doing it anyway.
Amen, Oprah.

2005-10-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to go to work in America, where it is frequently accepted that we live to work? Where work is one of the first things we ask about when meeting someone, where it is definition, identity, symbol?

If you love your work, then you likely love your life, but even this notion- that we must aspire to love our work, is an attitude reserved for those who have the luxury to explore the deeper meaning of their existence.

What we choose to do for money is also what we choose to do with a majority of our time; it is where we invest energy, and, because education costs so much in this country, where we invest money in hope that there will be a good return on our investment. The fact that we assume we can *choose* what we do for money is something not everyone believes. In my circle, work is ground for comparison, is deepy significant, is telling. It illustrates what we think we are worth, the state of our self-esteem, the state of our submission, or risk-taking, our resigment or adventure, our drive, or our acceptance of what is. Our jobs expose our beliefs about self, priority,logic, magic, expose the way we move about the game or life, the way we play, the way we understand the world to be a jungl, war-zone, playground, party... They way we work implies the way we understand the word.

I saw a bunch on fellow Cornell Alums last month. Old friends. Lawyer, web architect, project manager, another lawyer, chemist, television production assistant. What are you doing Erin they asked? I am a massage therapist and yoga teacher, I say. And I'm writing. No more questions ensued. My friend Danbob, who is more aligned with the struggling artist profile, managing a public photo lab in downtown Manhattan, and who is trying to get his pictures out into the world of capitalism, chimes, Yeah Erin, your poems are amazing, I'm still reading them. Thanks Dan I say, and thus starts the familiar inner soliloquy, my inner critics yammering away, pushing each other off stage to one-up the other, hurling insults at my blue collar profession, at my "craft", saying, anyone can massage bodies, anyone can teach yoga, but what are you doing about your TRUE calling(s), and why aren't you addressing them with concerted effort, why aren't you singing and writing, and doing what you do best, why scatter your energy like this?

My mother's cleaning lady from Brazil has become my friend. She tells me about Augustino, her bereft, listless Italian husband who has been without a job for 8 months, again, this is the second time, and she supports both of them with her cleaning, and she is worn. All these months, Erin, I pay for his daughter's tuition, I pay for everything. I clean 5 houses in one day, I leave at 6am and get home at 8 pm and Augustino is at the computer, is in the house, no dinner for me, I have to make dinner, clean our house, after I get home. That's awful I say. It's no good Erin. I shake my head. I have paid ten thousand dollars for him and his daughters, Erin no more, I tell him, if you don't get a job, you move out. He cries, I'm so depressed! What for Augustino? I say, you have a roof," (in her strange English which I have come to understand, it sounds like "roofay") you have food, what is there to be depressed about?

Vina is 55 years old, very thin, always in the same clothes, jeans, tank top or t shirt, slip on shoes, gold jewelry. She looks older than 55. I have a feeling she doesn't eat much, or drink enough water. Her face is wrinkled and sallow, no good color, dry hair, unhealthy. It seems that she is resigned to this karma without ever having given much thought to either resignation or karma. She hugs me, and updates me on her family. You're depressed, I tell him, she continues, because you don't work. I wake up depressed, Erin, and I go to work. I have houses to clean, I'm busy all day, I don't think about it. I come home, take a shower , which feels good, eat, go to sleep, and do it again. It's good.

I see her a week later and she tells me Augustino got job, Erin! Oh good, what kind of job? When I ask that, she laughs at me, a little bitterly. In a warehouse, she says. Near connecticut. Long drive? Yes. Does he like the job? I ask. This question seems to surprise her. Like (Likee) ? Like? Who knows? Augustino has to work, it doesn't matter what he likes. She is mopping the floor while we talk.