We are gathered here, dearly beloved...

… to get through this thing called life.
                                     - Prince

Here we are on this last day of the year 2018. I've had good days and bad days and in between days, and that's the way life is made up, right? On the good days, we can be good to others, so others can see good. On the bad days, we can receive the good from others. On the days in the center of the spectrum, we have a choice, and I think this is where we find our power.

2018 was full of: growth, new friends, old friends, family, new dances and old dances, books read and books written (!!!), film and art and theatre, hundreds of miles walked and even a few at a snail's pace run, new discoveries, seams stitched, chaturangas and savasanas galore, three journals filled, cookies baked, pizzas and tacos and fries devoured, obsessions kindled (Twin Peaks and Haruki Murakami, I see you...), road trips, waterfalls, golden snowglobe fall days, new dinosaurs, unicorns, llamas, a cute sloth, one extremely anxious gray ball of fluff, one cute boy, one dear husband.

In 2019, I can only hope to continue to fully embrace my curiosity, peculiarities, kindness, drive, love, empathy, creativity, and let them take me where they will, all fostered by a sense of exploration with a studied reticence at the urge to treat me, myself, like a problem that needs to be solved. I want to be good to me in 2019. And eat more fish, because that's a great way to be good to myself.

Let's Get Weird. Or A Home For Peculiar Children.

This morning, a kid told me my child was, "annoying. All he ever talks about is dinosaurs and Star Wars." My heartrate soared behind the placid waters of my face.

He is mildly annoying sometimes, what with the perpetual talk of the raptor family and Storm Troopers, and theories about dinosaur extinction and mammals living in tandem with dinosaurs. He's an intense deep diver with a deep seeded desire to be a paleontologist. He even has his own fossil collection, largely found on his own. He's also a little peculiar, but that's fine by me, so long as he's cool with the Weird, too. I mean, this same kid who said this had literally just sat and pulled his red hoodie over his forehead, exclaiming to his deskmates that he was The Flash. All kids are all weird. If you're saying another kid is (insert negative descriptor) you're probably missing the fact that you're totally weird, too.

But back to my heart rate and the way it took off like Elon Musk funded its design. Being The Weird Kid - note the capitalization - was often more a cross to bear for me than a neatly wrapped gift for such a long time. Some days, The Strangeness still feels like a heavy mantle to shoulder.

I've come to think of it as something for which I can find gratitude, though. I can embrace the way my mind works these days, now that I have found my way through the labyrinth of adolescence and chased away the darkness that knocked chips in my shoulders. I'm probably not a normal, gold star sort of person, but I'm a good person, smart, ridiculously creative, intensely driven. I care for myself, for who I am, deeply, and regard others with that same respect. And the Weird? I hold it close, even at times when it makes me feel all alone in a crowded room, which still happens more often than I like to confess.

That embrace is softened by the way I feel when I'm alone now, the acceptance I've extended to who I am, who I was, who I will be, without the outside influence of judgement. I'm okay. I was okay. I will be okay. Frankly, I dig who I am. I feel like I have found a group of friends who get me and foster self-acceptance; that has been the most fortifying thing about developing adult friendships.

If there's any one single thing I hope to teach my child, sooner rather than later, it's that judgement passed upon you by others is not your problem at all; it's their burden to slough about this world. Be deep and complex, and know that sometimes intensity like we hold is intimidating and uncomfortable and scary to those around us, but that's okay, because sometimes bright things are uncomfortable to behold.

The Lately Later Thoughts

This one will ramble. As I do sometimes.

A couple of weeks ago, Paul and I went on one of our bookstore adventures. I adore bookstores, and have dreams of lying in piles of books all day long, luxuriating in the smell and picking each one up and devouring it in a single sitting. Weird books, classic books, nonfiction, journals, kids books, you name it. I - generally - don't discriminate. Words, pages, you had me at hello. Okay, enough with my literary wet dream. Back on track, Jessie, back on track. I purchased Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist Journal, apparently named after his book of the same strain.

It's full of fun exercises to get your scratching (to reference Twyla Tharp) maxed out, gather those ideas, and have a place for them. I already scratch for inspiration quite a bit, from books, film, daily life, dreams, but this flips the concept on its head and sends you to weird places for ideas, and I LOVE IT. My favorite exercise so far has been charting out a creative family tree. 

For this particular exercise, I chose Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Kurt Vonnegut as my points of inspiration, but I could easily have chosen writers like Naomi Alderman, who I know is inspired by the great Margaret Atwood, or Phillip Pullman. Anyone, really. It's a fun workout to see that the same people who inspired these great writers are also sources of inspiration for me. Garcia-Marquez was deeply influenced by his grandparents' own stories, as well as Dickens, Dostoyevsky, and Kafka. In the upper branches, you can also find Hemingway, Thomas Paine, Poe, and Nietezch. I'm in good company whenever I sit down to write. It's comforting to realize this, and reminds me of one of my favorite affirmations for writers:

When the writer within me meets with the reader within me, great things happen.

I know this to be true, and I like to wrap myself in this truth like a cozy blanket. Good things will happen if I just continue on.

I felt lousy and tired all week last week. Following the aforementioned glutening the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I've felt drained and achy, consumed by the gluten flu lite, and functional but barely. The nugget had a lock-in at school on Friday, and I told Paul we should relax and start on the last two seasons of Twin Peaks. 

Speaking of creators who inspire me, David Lynch is a brilliant artist. He stretches his media to the limit to convey sprawling ideas that are challenging, uncomfortable, delicious. I hope someday I can create something so... complex.

The marathon stretched through the weekend. We finally finished last night, and I'm still in awe. But something happened while I was watching that was unrelated to the story. Candy, a pretty, slim girl walked on screen, and I found myself in my normal thought pattern. My brain begins whirling it on a secret command prompt, arrows in front and a go, a virus planted there along the way as I've walked through this world.

"I wish I knew what it was like to have legs like that."

For the first time ever, though, I peeled back the curtains of body dysmorphia, curious to see the hidden mechanism. I asked myself, why? What spurs this process? I dove in, brave, wind blowing in my hair as I jumped from the precipice. And on the way down, I saw that I don't necessarily want a different body, but rather to not have to think about my body. To not feel the constant urge to sidle in front of the mirror to see that my thighs don't look too big in an outfit. To not feel out of place because of my appearance. To feel at home, and to devote the energy I waste wishing for something other than what I have to more worthy pursuits. 

But I can do that anyway, be at home, here and now. I don't have to waste my precious time and energy hiding.

I am not required to continue complicity in a culture that robs women of so much time and energy, a culture that would attempt to mold us to its own selfish desires than to mold to each woman. I can't say I will never look at my body in the mirror and lament a perceived extra five pounds again, or legs that if they were a mere two inches longer would be a work of perfection, or a waist that will just never be that narrow by proportional ratio to my hips and bust. Or wrinkles that grow with love and laughter and deep thoughts that stitch together my brow. But maybe, just maybe, a modicum more of my time and space can be devoted to the things that are more intrinsically important.

Look, I don't blame the normal sources. I don't blame fashion magazines, Barbie, the golden ratio. I blame a patriarchal system that subjects women to inestimable standards that only a tiny portion of us can reach. We are all someplace on a sliding scale, but the scale is a liar and a cheat, and it will take your life if you let it. Don't let it. 

The Gentle Relentless Power

Sleeping tree limbs
A gray burial shroud
Scattered with jewels
To cover what will be
When the next year rolls around
Now we lay Uncovered

And Bare
Exposed.

 A mercifully free day popped up on our radar. No practice for Hobbes' stage debut in the Nutcracker Fantasy. No family commitments. No bike rides or writing or anything at all. Just freedom. So we slept late, feasted on cinnamon rolls (I, a gluten free, egg white only, flax seed milk cinnamon roll mug cake because I am extra like that, and had been presumably glutened the night previous.) and dressed for a day in the woods.

We made our way to Greeter Falls, a place I've been but barely remembered, until I reached the bottom of the spiraling staircase and saw the huge amphitheater carved out over the millennia by the steady, relentless, gentle-but-powerful flow of the water down, down, down, down the drop. And I'm reminded even now of what gentle relentless power can do, flowing over day by day, year by year. That kind of force unbridled can create something beautiful to behold.

I fell in the water while rockhopping, soaking my right foot. Then Paul accidentally loosed a branch he was holding as we skirted the top of the gorge, which flew back and hit me hard in the forehead. The boy serenaded us for seemingly hours with endless lectures about his imaginary friend Gagel the cat and his cohorts, as well as the cats from the Warriors series, with a smattering of dinosaurs. Someday, he is going to be a writer or a professor or some other profession where he can write and convey thoughts.

But then we took a short spur out to a place neither Paul or I had ever visited, Blue Hole, and as we descended into the little hollow there were laurels and rhododendrons, and it was like a whole other world set apart, and I was filled with happiness.

"The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness." - John Muir 

Existential Crisis: Honesty In Motion

How do you meet the wave?

Do you plunge over the top?

Do you dive through the center, bubbles swirling around you?

Do you swim sideways, rolling over and under?

Do you swim away, allowing the wave to push you back to your starting point?


What if there is no single correct answer, and all you need to do is simply take action? The wave is coming, regardless of your choice.

We are all alive, and then we die. This awareness seeds anxiety deep in my heart. That seed germinates and blooms into fear of failure and too much pressure.

I've started things later than most, finally trusting myself to spin tales and create beautiful, sometimes eccentric, things to behold, to read, to wear. All because I chose to explore and see what actually waited to be uncovered on the inside. It took so long to get to the start.

Bad habits are old friends with bad influence, and I've known them so long I find it hard to end the acquaintance. I stop exploring, and start building out of expectation, forgetting that Rome wasn't built in a day. I want it all, and I want it now. Because I see my talent and giftedness, and I am impatient for the reward of what is sometimes lonely work, toiling away at something I divined up out of my mind.

And I am reluctant to take the risk of sharing, not just with friends, but also the people who could make or break me. This reticence makes me feel hopeless. Like I'm never going to meet my goals of creating for a living.

I catch myself in the quagmire of self doubt, then say to myself, "What if someone could teach me to do this thing I already know how to do?" because this feels safe, like a fail proof, when a life of creativity never will be fail proof. And that, that truth, is the secret that has scared me away for at least thirteen years, and hindered me being my most true self.

I want freedom and reliance together, and sometimes those concepts are mutually exclusive. If I want to grow my creative self, it is imperative that I choose to embrace the danger-or-adventure of taking the plunge below the surface to become part of the wave and embrace it; I think this is the best choice for me. Soaking myself instead of protecting myself, indulging in the joy of deeper exploration of just what I have to offer, and sloughing off expectation as I go.

So, for me, I think the time has come to go deep.

Short Story: The Cavity

Sometimes the news feeds me an idea I can't ignore. The discovery of teeth in a wall in an old dental office was too good to pass up. Enjoy The Cavity.

The wall was fresh from the plaster and paint, smooth to the touch, and he patted it over the invisible patchwork. Was there energy inside the wood and drywall? He could sense something in there. Behind closed eyes, between his last appointments ever, he recalled the strange day so many years prior. That day had led to here, and would lead to tomorrow, too.

He was still young then, blond hair just beginning to lighten to gray at the temples. Courting Anna, who found his manner and appearance dignified and his secret touch electric, Walter had no plans for the week following or the one after that. He cleaned teeth, saw Anna, and little else, for there was little else to do in a place like this. James, the farmer from the valley across the top of the ridge had just stood from the chair and walked out the door to see Virginia at the front desk to settle up his affairs, leaving the door ajar behind him.

Walter stood at the counter, sanitizing his tools, the smell of isopropyl alcohol hanging in the air, his mind vacantly jumping from one thing to another. Outside, summer breathed its last breath of flame into the trees and the leaves were just catching. The date was September 30^th, and that was the day he learned how not to die.

The gentle clicking of the hallway clock filled the room. Walter brought it with him from Delaware, and the southern climate had taken its toll on the timepiece. Humidity stretched and warped the proportions of the wood, but the inner workings still turned and clicked away their reliable rhythm. Walter could never be sure how long the silence persisted before he noticed the clock had stopped its familiar clicking of the long hand’s advance, carrying with it the short hand, but as he cleared the counter, there it was. Quiet.

Walter, unsurprised the clock had given up finally, turned toward the door, still half open as if waiting to share a secret. Through the openings between the hinges, where the door met the door facing, Walter saw her. She shifted into the room slowly, feet unmoving, but rustling, and he dropped the tiny dental mirror to the floor where it clattered then stopped, and the silence was heavy, pushing Walter to the edge of the counter for fear of suffocating under its weight.

Still half covered by the door, she sought to build a connection with Walter, and caught his eyes in her own. She pushed hard on the door without raising her hand. The door slammed into the wall, rattling everything inside the renovated shed he called his place of practice. This was not Willie, the small boy from the next town over who was scheduled for a checkup. Her gray lips pressed firmly together, until she spoke. Walter saw into the gaping hole as she spoke, and the darkness beckoned behind the shiny gray gums. The smell of sweet rotting meat and leaves left to decay filled the room. Her voice shook the room as she said, “You, Walter Windrow Sutton, will die.”

Her jaw did not move to enunciate the words. The sounds escaped her gut, booming out from the darkness she held inside, tempered with the sounds of grinding and jostling of the secrets within. “Unless,” and the stones and gravel inside rolled, “you fill me.”

She held out a tooth in her grimy right hand, nails broken and blackened and wrinkles and folds filled with decay, a bright and perfect molar. The roots were clean and the tooth shone out against the grime of her pawing palm. The mouth yawned wide again, further this time so that her jaw hung down onto her clavicle, and she shoved her right hand, folded into a fist, deep into her mouth. Walter watched as the wrist and forearm followed and could see her throat bulge beneath the dangling jaw until her elbow was all that was left. She withdrew her hand and closed her jaw.

Once more her jaw opened and the sounds of rustling emitted from inside her, before she loudly rasped out, “5,000.” Walter realized the jumbling noises within were not stones or sticks, but teeth, rolling and jostling below the surface. He gripped the metal edge of the counter until his fingers might bleed, breath coming fast and shallow, his mouth a dry hollow. His head back and forth, tracing a line up and down with his nose, eyes locked on the darkness just inside those gray and desiccated lips. She was hunger. He would fill her.

The clock started up again in the hallway. There was Walter, still hanging onto the counter top, fearful of drowning in the smell of death. He was already there, though, and the smell had filled him, deep into the crevaces of his lungs and floating into his bloodstream as it flowed throughout his earthly form, so the eternal and the temporal could mix and be one forever. When the boy settled into the chair, Walter felt it was important to extract a molar. He was certain this baby tooth needed to go to clear the way for the tooth bud below to grow, and smiled as he held the tooth up in the golden late afternoon light shining and pink with blood.

Now this wall held the full 5,000 teeth, and Walter was old and tired but immune to death’s final blow. The teeth here, he had broken the best things in his life to fill this hole, and he thought of Annie’s jaws emptied of bite. He wished for rest, something to fill the emptiness yawning inside him, a cavity to be charged, and Walter Windrow Sutton understood the levy placed on his life. He rustled out the door and the stones jostled within as he laughed at the sky.

**Creator retains full rights**

Heart Wide Open

Sometimes I struggle to live openly, welcoming what may come. But that's not how we, these tiny bits of stardust, Rumi's "Universe in ecstatic motion," are meant to live. 

Open to what is offered

From time to time, I find a place, especially a space in time, where I feel myself open up. I spread and bloom to welcome in the light and the dark and all the beauty around me. And love and kindness seal in the warmth and goodness. I carry them with me, those sensed feelings, until they meet with me again in full. I see all the possibilities of my life, the way it intersects and influences others, all because of the magic of that space.

Overlooking Burgess Falls in White County, TN

Yesterday, the three of us loaded up in the car and drove to White County to visit Burgess Falls. The park is stunning, with a fairy tale of a hike past several large drops. The Falling Water River loses around 250 feet in elevation as it runs through the park, creating a river gorge that feels more like it belongs in in the western states than the center of Tennessee.

I often wish I could visually capture the magnitude of these moments, but no picture or painting can do justice to the breadth of an experience. But yesterday was special. The golden sycamore leaves fell from high up in the ridge tops, floating out over the gorge before falling down to the water to drift past us before hitting the top of the water to be carried away to some other place. A bright blue sky created the perfect backdrop, and only served to highlight the autumn snowglobe in which I found myself and my two favorite people. 

With gratitude, I share this magical experience. When we bloom out, we create the space we need to flourish. Be willing to be visionary, to explore.

A Love Note To Myself

There are so many voices in this world. All of them, most of them, some of them, maybe half, maybe a quarter, a handful, the inner circle, one that matters, they want what is best for you, or possibly something of a compromise between what is best for you and them, perhaps even what seems good for you but is excellent for them. They make tons of racket, noise that lets you know that you should love yourself as you are but you should also lose ten pounds, stop eating your favorite food, graduate from an Ivy League university in two years with no debt and solve the problems facing society, while you run ten miles daily, meditate for at least ten minutes, feed your family three squarely healthy meals a day, read a book a week, and be a general portrait of perfection.

But that noise, it blocks out all the best things.

The sound of leaves as the rustle on these days just before autumn sets in full, lazy afternoons with small people watching movies on your worn-in (well-loved?) sofa, the sound of your heart churning away to let you know it is still there, keeping you awash. The quiet whir of your mind as it goes to someplace amazing, leaving beautiful things in its wake.

We aren't projects. I am not a project. You are not a project. You don't have to constantly improve. I don't have to work so damn hard all the time. Neither do you. Unless that's your thing. I don't suggest that you leave all attempts to be better behind, but are you doing all this to quiet down the most important sound of all? Sometimes I catch myself listening to all the noise, and I devour the words and they become part of me, because you are what you eat. I will brutalize myself in the name of improvement.

When I do that, I stifle the most important sound.

Let your inner voice be your guide. Allow her the volume to reach through to your daily life, to fuel your happiness in the present. Muffle her power less. Nurture her, so that she may be a beast among men. Then we can take on the world, with love in our hearts. Love yourself.

Note: I have not read the piece from which this graphic is excerpted.

Working on the Inside

"What's he building in there?
What the hell is he building in there?
He has subscriptions to those magazines,
He never waves when he goes by,
He's hiding something from the rest of us,
He's all to himself, I think I know why..."
Tom Waits, What's He Building In There?

But really, what are you building in there? What magical, dark, great, goodness-only-knows, genius, singular, unusual, unique, wonderful thing is spinning up inside your skull and chest space that you haven't unlocked yet out of fear? Fear of failure, fear of trying, fear of being known, because being known, truly seen, is the hardest thing of all? Gosh, just give it all up and open it all up and let yourself grow and bloom and be. We each inside of us store things we will never know if we don't take the time to use this life to explore and find out just what the inner us is constructing. What are you building in there? Take a risk, take a chance, be real, and show off your weird, your funky, your million-ways-completely-fucked-up, your imperfect symphony, your unfinished work of art, the words you scrabble. Let me see your insides.

Self Confident: A few thoughts

What separates us from who we were, in essence, born to become? Even outside the realm of destiny, most of us are gifted in some way or another, and if we have the courage to follow the treasures in that chest inside us, a world opens up to us anew. Why aren't more of us leveling up and discovering next level happiness, success, joy, love, openness?

I was sitting in yoga on Saturday morning, flowing through a sequence, guided by a friend, ujjayi breath streaming in and out, like the waves on a shore, and I caught myself doing it. Monitoring myself, hoping I looked legit. This isn't anything new.

My love language is affirmation. (And gifts and time and... I'm needy. I think I always have been.) Especially - particularly - if I exhibit some level of skill at an activity. It seems aptitude digs the hole deeper instead of filling it, like if the dozer missed the well by three feet and instead of striking water, the workers dig for thirty feet only to find no springs or aquifers.

I am that empty pit, depths dark and cold. It's hard to fill, and I often try to do so via comparison. It's a bad habit, and I can't remember a time when comparison wasn't a black chip in my brain. If someone dug into my gray matter, I'm sure they would find a chunk of mysterious matter that sits deep in there, driving me to seek affirmation in my own soul via comparison.

I caught myself, though, working to fill in the hole with buckets of lies, and that's when it happened. We were in downward facing dog, and I thought to myself, "It doesn't have to be this way. I don't have to feel like this." And I thought of myself in a bubble, separate from the world, and I knew that in that void, I would still... know. If I put in the work, I will meet my goals, and that has nothing to do with anyone else. I will see the fear, and I will nod and say, "Hello there, old friend," because the fear is there because I am following a worthwhile path.

Self confidence is the quiet awareness that I am the vessel, here to enjoy my work and my play. It is knowing life is practice, and perfection is elusive at best. It's waking up and doing the work every day, and leaving nothing to chance. It isn't a checklist, to be compared with your neighbor's work. Comparison is built on a foundation of fear: terror that what you do will never be enough. Confidence is your work, your fun, and yours alone. Your effort, your kindness, your love, that is the source of confidence.

If Father John Misty and Sri Patthabi Jois ate lunch?

Part One

"I didn't get invited but I know where to go..." Date Night, Father John Misty 

Let's swoon over FJM for a minute. Now, proceed.

I had a bit of an identity crisis over summer break. It happens. My very spirited child talks all the time, which sometimes gives the sensation of assault by words, so that at the end of the day I'm exhausted from doing nothing, and I've done nothing to stave off my laundry list of normal housework, much less the short list of work I attempt to accomplish daily in the pursuit of my larger goals.

The book I am writing sat untouched for weeks, and who knows what the heck my characters are doing now; they've probably solved most of their problems on their own and moved on with their lives. In which case more power to them. Insert shrugging picture of myself here. I won't even bring up the huge pile of untouched fabric. Actually, it looks like I am, so let's just say that romper I planned to make a month and a half ago is still just a few yards of fabric laying in the extra bedroom.

Of course, this is not an environment in which I thrive. I begin feeling very fight or flight, tending toward flight, flight being the search for what the hell am I doing with my life, when just three months before I was on a bike ride with Mary and told her I felt so good about where my life was going. Okay, so I'm not living in the moment when I feel frantic and anxious, and I'm fighting against the current. Let's acknowledge this. But the current is so damn strong sometimes, and it feels like it's pushing me under and I forget I can swim...

Well, in the midst of this tumultuous period, I held the situation out for another friend to flip through and examine, and he told me that people like me have to take risks. Damnit. Always with the risks.

Lately, I've been hungry for the confidence I see in some of my friends and peers, their surety. They are aware of their valuable unicorn awesomeness. I want more of that, more nonchalant self-belief. More, "I didn't get invited but I know where to go." More "I belong here, doing what I'm doing, and I'm damn good at it".

Part Two

"Practice and all is coming." -Sri Pattabhi Jois

Oh dear, I feel like I'm quoting hashtags, but it just isn't true. It's a quote from the father distiller of Ashtanga yoga, and lets discount his questionable personal history and look at this phrase.

My work is far from perfect. Maybe I'm the next Atwood or Kafka or Vonnegut or Hemingway or Garcia-Marquez, or maybe I'm not, perhaps I'm the next me, but I'm working hard in the gap between where I was and where I can be, pushing on toward that 10,000 hours to adeptness, honing my craft. I can be confident that I am building the house brick-on-brick-on-brick-on-brick, and someday I will be confident that I can add on the roof and windows and doors. Let's throw an English roll arm sofa in front of the fireplace to indulge my obsession. Now I need to stop worrying about the invitation, and follow the path to where I need to go.

Dive

Us humans, we are so damn magical. We fall from the sky through clouds afloat on nylon bags, whooping and hollering, not pretending to be birds, no, but wild animals flying without wings.

Wait, let me start again. I'm sitting in the pool, and reading, something heavy about death and I'm tearing up, and there's this crack like if lightning had a small infant child, followed by the sound of a whoop. Then the storm continues, popping, crackling. High above me, people, fragile skeleton scaffolds held together by rubber bands and stretchy fabric, are unfurling giant swaths of nylon, and we're only here this once, so why not fall and catch yourself with a glorified sleeping bag?
There are clouds up there, too, impending light and larger sound, spinning fractals and growing exponentially at the edges, and the fallers float in and out of the haze, a dream of reality, and the've escaped real for a few short minutes as they free fall then slow.

One catches an eddy like when I'm in a river but different because this eddy spins, and my heart stops for a second. I wonder if time snapped our hearts together there for a moment, me from the safety of my backyard retreat, them from the unstable current of the atmosphere, a reminder that we fall apart, but fuck, we are still alive.

A Few Thoughts About Separation Policy

I am disgusted by the despicable practices of our government. It's always something, keeping us on our toes, or maybe more like cortisol sky high, tears behind lids of eyes, my country is enacting state-sponsored terrorism. It's the little things daily that add up to big things, and the big things that some portion of the citizens and officials would have us believe are only small things. It's the day-in-day-out refrain that what we really need more of in our country is respect for nuclear family values, then ripping children away from their parents because they chose to seek a better life for their family across a line imposed by humans on this land we all share. And this earth we all share is gradually ruined day by day at the hands of the same people who tell us to love families more then destroy them at their convenience.

People, humans, we move. That's how we came here, to live on this continent. Our birthright is one of migration and immigration, seeking something new and different and better. What a travesty we've made of the magical opportunity we've been given, squandered.

Even worse, 37% of people in our country have been polled in agreement with these egregious transgressions against human rights. Pardon me. I think I just threw up. If a government will do this to small children, why do you think you're safe? Maybe not today, tomorrow, or even in ten years, but someday, if tyranny isn't thwarted, it will affect you, too. And look, I know this is why some choose to bear arms, but I choose to believe that the maintenance of civil, equal society is the only way to keep a tyrannical ruler in check, and data tends to affirm that belief.

I know I'm no longer churched, but one thing came to mind this morning, and it's the thing I'll leave you with.

"And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me."

Just a Nibble

Look, I've been writing. So much. I want to share, but I only feel okay doing so in little niblet excerpts, because I'm obsessively protective of my ideas. Here's a bite of what I wrote today, a tiny piece of an enormous whole.

Lybica went to the opening again, and urged Beta to enter. She whined and shied away from the opening. Then Lybica turned to me, motioned for me, with her giant, tufty paw, to go to Beta. I let my feet carry me to my friend.

I offered her consolation. “Beta, this won’t hurt. I just have to lead you in.” I petted her and hugged her body to mine, but still she refused to trust me.

She shook and whined, fighting me with all her power. “I don’t want to die, Enid. I’m not ready.” And she closed her eyes to the world as her feelings rattled through her body.

“Will you die?”

“Oh yes, Enid. I will. I will still be here, of course, just like you and Lybica, but part of me will be gone and I will be forever chained to you, to this tree. I love you, my friend, and would do anything for you, but this sacrifice shakes me to my core, leaves me scared. Please hold me and carry me.”

I crouched beside the enormous she wolf, gathered her hulking, sobbing mass into my arms, and began to stumble over my own tired legs as I carried her toward the opening. The light shone out into the darkness, throwing wild shadows all around us, and I was Charon, shuttling this beast to her next destination. But I was a beast, too, no higher, no lower, a friend gently urging the shutter aside to join the world one step over.

Cheers.

Vision Quest

The vision quest. It's at the hidden, secret heart of any culture. We Americans (and maybe western culture as a whole) tend to see it as self-indulgent, with our bootstrap mentality. This idea that what we need is inside, and we need to free it, and that experientially there is a full range of this endeavor... it feels big, challenging, hard to chart.

A year ago, I read Elizabeth Gilbert's account of her own year long vision quest. Longing for my own big, wild, love cave of traveling adventure, I agonized for weeks, then casually ran into an interview with Gilbert in which she said that while her privilege allowed her vision quest to be epic and to span continents, you, we, us, don't have to go on a 52 week long trip to have the same experience. I think I stared at my desktop screen in a typical blue-light stupor and nodded.

But here I am a year later - give or take - and I am a different person. I am awake to who I am.

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." - E.E. Cummings

And who I am is, admittedly, kind of weird, sort of messy, but beautiful, funny, smart, witty. I have whole worlds inside me, begging to be released, the bring with them truth and awareness. I'm such a baby of a writer, author, but I'm learning, from others and myself as I go. I hope some day my works will be on the shelves of indie shops and burning up the scales of Amazon, and I'm charting my course, orienteering as I go, because frankly I'm clueless beyond just sitting and writing. My own adventure has me on the edge of my seat.

Oh, the bigger vision quest journey, though... right?

A couple of years ago, I went through an emotionally tumultuous period, and that darkness may have prompted this inner journey. Bad news pinged all the time, nationally, locally, and awakened in me the skeletons of my adolescence. I spent time digging them up, cataloging the bits and pieces, displaying them, and exorcising the demons from them, before I slid them into a silk pouch that I reburied in my heart safe and sound, with the awareness that I couldn't leave those experiences exhumed forever. I repacked them, and there they reside, informing my freedom, my understanding of the world around me, my empathy, my choices, my creativity. I try not to hold grudges any longer, and also work to protect myself from anything that might trigger the return of the darkness.

Always, my creativity has followed me, whether I was writing stories in third grade, dreaming of clothes I would like to create, drawing or painting, crafting papers for political science and history, or now, realizing goals I've had since I was just a kid. I fill my days now with creative projects, and it isn't always easy or playful, sometimes hard work bears down on me.

On those days, when creation feels more like dredging up the dead from a cloudy, dank lake than what I call the birth of Venus days, I keep going anyway.

I used to give up when whatever I attempted felt complex, challenging, or hard, because somewhere along the road to now I picked up the notion that if creative endeavors weren't easy, you were doing it wrong or you weren't talented. That has changed. I know the dredging days are just as good as the birth of Venus days.

Rambling. It's what I like to do. But here we are, and all I want to say is, find yourself. Find what you love, and do it. And if that path leads someplace, make a plan to just do a little bit every day, eating that elephant bite by bite. The world we live in will tell you to just keep your nose to the grindstone, to keep your blinders up. I entreat you to think differently, to think about what you have always wanted, to think about what you want now, to know that those things may be separate, and to realize that's okay.

Maybe you do that a few different ways, long walks in the woods, yoga and meditation, taking care of your body vessel, reading, rediscovering what you love (oh, film, you have a huge part of my heart), music, and stepping out of your comfort zone in all the ways. But this is your journey, not mine, and perhaps you do this by suiting up every day and digging into your pile of documents or diagrams, or by teaching sweet children and letting them be your guide, or by caring for others. Whatever your method, use it and follow your truth and your path and do your thing. Lose the blinders, and dig into yourself, because the world needs you awake and aware and loving your life.

Public Speaking, You Scare Me

It's a long story, and I can't start at the beginning because I'm not sure where it all started.

I'll start at a reasonable juncture. In January, my friend Kylene asked if I would like to teach yoga at a special spa day at the MOPS group I used to attend. I gladly agreed, but the event was a snow out, so we planned to possibly do it this month instead. When I touched base to see if plans were still on, Kylene told me that plans had changed, but I was welcome to come to the meeting anyway and catch up with everyone and even speak about my time in MOPS and its impact in my life if I would like. I told her I would love to come. And how public speaking is tough for me, but that if I felt moved, I would speak. I really had no plans to speak, Kylene!

MOPS was so good to me, though, and that kept tapping at my backdoor. Then another MOPSie friend shared something via social media, and talked about experiencing the SAME EMOTIONS. That pushed me a little closer. And this morning I woke and said to myself, "Well, maybe I'll share." I got ready to go, and as I was fixing my hair (what?) I realized I had these words floating around that needed desperately to be set free and heard. I sent Kylene a message and committed, because I knew if I didn't I would make excuses and not stand and use my voice.

I stood in front of a room full of women with eyes and ears, and I spoke. This is what I said, paraphrased because no one remembers what they said afterward:

"It's worth noting since I'm standing up here in front of you all that I am terrible at and terrified of public speaking. I have notes here, but I will invariably forget to say things that I meant to say, and will say things I didn't plan. I want to warn you.

I'm so happy to say I am an alumna of MOPS. I love the organization and their mission, and I'm so grateful for the friends I've made here. Hobbes was a surprise; we had never planned to have kids. So I didn't know who I was anymore when I came to MOPS. I felt very set adrift, as if on a boat, with no map or compass or stars to navigate by. 

I used to teach yoga at the Rec Center here, and Patricia came to my class sometimes. I thought she was a pretty cool girl, and that we should get to know each other. We would chat after class, and one day she mentioned MOPS and told me the new session was starting soon, and that I should come.

I am excruciatingly, painfully introverted. I prefer invisibility to being seen, anonymity. Don't look at me. So I feel like MOPS is where I learned to be more open, and how to make adult friends. 

We were in a budget crunch at my house at the time of the first meeting; I don't remember why. My husband, Paul, asked me if it was absolutely necessary to spend $35 to go make friends with other moms, why couldn't I go do that at the playground? But I know myself, and knew that I of all people wouldn't go to the playground and actually talk to other moms. That's terrifying!

So I came here, and I am terrible at making friends and meeting new people, but I also like to make myself really uncomfortable, and choose to be comfortable doing it. I mean, that's why I'm up here talking to all of you right now, in the interest of being comfortable being uncomfortable. And I met all these amazing moms, and I found a safe place where I could be my messy self and no one cared, because they were messy too, and it was wonderful. Accept the mess, because there's beauty in there.

It's easy to look at the world around us and say, "We can't come together on things and solve big problems," but MOPS has shown me that we can set aside our differences and become friends. My group was a group of women from different faiths, beliefs, places and origins, and we're all here because we're moms. I look around the room here, and I see the same is true now. That's amazing, that MOPS helps us build friendships of kindness, empathy, and encouragement.

MOPS has also shown me what society can be when we come together under commonality, and what we as women and mothers can do. I firmly believe we could change everything for the better if the reins were turned over to us. I mean, we can convince tiny toddler terrorists to go to bed, and not want to run out the front door afterward. Well, maybe we want to run, but that's ok. That takes strength, and it's beautiful to see that. 

I'm extremely grateful for what MOPS has done for me. I'm a better person for my time here. I'm trying new things, thanks to the encouragement of my friends from MOPS. I'm writing and sewing and making beautiful things. I am so thankful for that, and for the person I am for this group."

Moving Forward Fearlessly. Or Attempting.

I am the sort to be bogged down by decisions, by projects with no clearly defined parameters, by ideas with no path to execution. As a creative person, this fear has been a roadblock. A wall, ten thousand feet high, built of fear of failure, terror at the idea of commitment, trepidation at choice. Choice of the wrong path. So I make no choice. I think about what I will do, and I wait in the place where all I do is ponder. Because thinking is safe. Lack of effort is safe. No attempt is safe. I let myself stay there for a long time, locking the cell from the inside against feelings of inadequacy. I was safe there, but not free. The key was overthinking.

Thinking, thought... the catalyst of my creative process. But I can't allow the fire to die there. Unlock the door, let the oxygen in the room so the fire can breathe. Open the door and let the fire out to explore and burn up the world so it can be born anew.

Are you thinking about doing something? Something big, something new, an adventure? Is there something you want to do physically? Don't wait. Try. Give your enterprise your effort. That's where the magic happens. Books don't write themselves entirely in your head. Headstands don't happen because you look at pictures of inversions on the IG. You don't get faster or stronger purely by dreaming. Your hamstrings don't stretch themselves. Recipes don't cook or bake by sitting on your counter. New skills are learned in the doing. If you want something, ask. Designs don't turn to reality without your handiwork.

Are you afraid? I am, too. It's okay. It's normal. Go ahead and do it anyway.

Gathering the chaos

Have I always been a writer? I think so. I know I've always been a reader. The stories I wrote in third grade. My score of 35 on the ACT Reading section. Using my words in senior AP English to try to terrify my teacher. The years and years of typing out words to send into the universe via this blog in its many incarnations. The search for a degree area that allowed me to feel empowered through writing. The books and books and late nights and author obsessions, book hangovers. Words written on napkins in notebooks. The way I observe. All those things and more have met at this one point inside me lately, to turn into words on paper.

And it feels like magic to take the chaos inside and reorder it into something that makes sense of a vision, much akin to the time magic of a bike ride. It's internal, of my production, and becomes something people can see and feel. I'm still finding so much of myself as a crafter of fiction, finding my way slowly into a world I don't yet know and for which I still lack the map and compass. But there's nothing like creating. It's buoyant and buoying and makes me feel like all the choices that led to here make so much sense and I love it.

Today I wrote something deep and dark and real and raw, and it's full circle and full of realization, and maybe a little tinged with vengeance that's secret and soft. It makes sense of a situation, and when I can take a step back and look through this fictional character's eyes, it feels palpable, and full of gratitude and clarity.

Checking In

I have neglected this particular medium the past few months, regrettably. I won't promise to do better, because I can't give guarantees as such, but check in I will, for check in I must. Sometimes I find myself sitting, and I say, "Oh, hey, self. Shall we write a blog post?" And so I do, because something within compels me.

I still ride some, here and there, on days when my body seems to be functioning at a level which allows me to exert myself. Maybe someday my ferritin stores will be topped off in such a way as to support a return to proper fitness on the bike. These days, though, I am happy to be able to ride and feel well afterwards. This approach is fine for me, and when I find myself particularly hung up over what I have lost, I remind myself of a few things, including the study I read that said that humans who aren't hyper-dedicated to excessive exercise typically express longer life spans. Whatever... it helps me rest at night.

Possibly I am overly devoted to yoga, but probably not even that. Something I have discovered is my longing and need to explore what I think of as authentic movement, mobilizing my body to do the things it was meant to do, and finding ways to express that movement in daily life. Part of that is yoga in its many shapes and forms, but it also manifests in simple things like squatting to fold laundry or clean the floors, walking barefoot more often, low-level-super-easy parkour (especially while hiking), and anything that contributes diversity to the way my body moves.

That exploration, seeing what my body can do on a given day, and challenging it to do things my mind questions, are part of a bigger picture issue with which I am currently grappling. As we age, my observations tell me that we are often willing to let our minds and body stagnate in deep ruts we have been creating since we were in junior high or high school. I don't want to accept poor coordination, lack of proprioception, loss of agility and acuity of both mental and physical aptitude as the status quo as I age.

Last year, in February or March, I decided that before I turned 35, I needed to test what I thought of as my boundaries. Feet over head in air. Standing on a moving plank of wood. I spent the past few months experimenting with cartwheels and dives from the edge of the pool, headstands and handstands. Other than tweaking my back a little while practicing diving, (ehem... bad form...) I haven't gotten hurt. Bruised and banged up from time to time when I fail to clear the area well and I fall out of an inversion, but nothing to write home about. Currently, working on standing on a skateboard. I want to challenge myself with delicious, unique movement.

Mentally, I've been exercising with books. (I read 12 books during December and January, and am taking a short break before I pick up with Moby Dick...) I've also taken a plunge, and have begun to flex my artistic muscles with clothing design, creative writing, gluten free baking, drawing, anything I can manage to gather into my grubby little paws. I find myself feeling like a truly full human as a result of this approach, like I am getting to know myself better, love myself better, which helps me be a better person in my own house and everywhere else.

The boys and I also took a trip to Mexico this year. I stepped off the boat in our first port of call, and was so grateful to be outside the US. I know I have a good life, and I know the luxury of that experience, but I hunger so for variety and for opportunity to experience something other than what I see every day, and I was so happy to be out of the country for the first time in around 15 years. Hopefully I won't have to wait so long for the next escape.

I want to live my best life, to see as much as I can, to feel as much as I can, to do as much as I can, and increasingly to create as much as I can. I covet the total human experience. To find out that the steps on the pyramid at Chichen Itza form a serpent in the shadow of the sun on the equinox. To maybe publish something insightful and beautiful and challenging and affecting. To create beautiful, wearable, relevant garments that make the lucky wearer feel amazing and ready to conquer. To see and recognize and appreciate beauty in all its forms. To love and be loved. To help. To move in ways that are authentic to my body and my journey. I want discovery. I want adventure. I want freedom to explore what my life can give.