Category: Uncategorized

Spent

I craved a day of silence, without even the nails on the feet of my dog;
A day of sky and grass without cliff or bluff;
A day without the grind of joint, without the astonishing burden of body;
I craved a stretch, a float, a field.
And then it came and have I squandered it all on a staring spree?
How pine needles fall in tiny threes, like the footprints of tall birds?
Did I fill my empty field with lichen branch,
with end stage leaf,
and dying light?

Is my time not well spent kneeling at the base of a tree?
At the end of all entirety;
What of this debris?

 

 

Shiva

During all the bluster and the blue, while the geese and the squirrels distracted me, the leaves covered all the mirrors. They went around to each; to the pond, to the stream, to the smallest pool and puddle; and fell in honor of the light. They were the ones who were first to arrive, and they were the first to die. And they were the ones to gently ask that I go elsewhere for my reflection.

So I stand before the unfamiliar. The tangled hedge I know to be true is gone, the cornfield is blank, and there’s too much space between things. The woods are made of bones and breath; the birds have nowhere to hide.

But here at the edge of something new, I can see what I’d forgotten: that branches grow in scribbles and loops, that shadows start and end, and all the leaves that fell before, lead through woods and out.

 

 

Optimism Takes Guts

Optimism is not for the faint of heart. It may look like life dressed in tulle, one grand plié across your grandmother’s guestroom; it may seem all pink and fizzy and innocent; but more often than not it’s a girl at a barre with a shot glass full of blisters.

Skepticism is easy. Apathy is easy. Road rage is easy. Waking up and hating your job, that pile of bills, CNN, Fox, bullies, the IRS, homophobes, racists, rich people, Nickleback – all of that is easy. But coming face to face with a world that smells like Kardashian-ass and still believing? That takes guts.

Optimism takes guts. Hardcore, feel-the-bern, guts. It takes guts to stand up for the truly marginalized in this world: possibility, hope, change and the next generation. And because we haven’t found an adequate shared language for it, it’s not easy to speak on behalf of the glass-half-full without sounding like you have a brain-half-empty. But in fact, optimism is not naïve. It’s hard won.

Optimism moves against the tide of darkness — but the reason it can, I think, is because it was born there. It is born from a backstage story and has to feel its way to light, to arrive front and center just where it’s needed most; in a voting booth, in poverty, in prayer; in the collective conscious of an apathetic audience.

And while it doesn’t always look tough, optimism fights hard. So yeah — you may find it wandering around Mr. Roger’s neighborhood wearing a sweater. But it puts its sneakers on every, single, day. It shows up, it goes out in the world, it says good morning. And if that’s not fighting, I don’t know what the hell is. Just because you don’t hear about it on the nightly news, make no mistake. It’s not trapped on the Oprah channel wearing pink tights. Optimism is out there carrying a pitchfork and torch long after all the other villagers have gone home to watch the Sound of Music.

Optimism shows up, with or without an audience. Day after day with its blisters and barres, it shows up and stays on pointe. It’s where activism lives, where hope comes for lessons, where change comes true. And while others swan dive toward despair, optimism fights for balance, stands on tippy toes, reaches, and arches across a darkened stage to remind us why we live.

Black Dog

It’s nearly dark, and the only sounds are the whisper and scrape of leaves. It’s so quiet out here I feel like I’m in church. I haven’t seen a soul, so maybe I am. Anyway, I have a sudden urge to light a candle and call a priest. It’s spooky. The leaves skitter around my legs. My bones are cold. A streetlight comes on.

Out at the edge of the dying light – way across the shadowy night – I can make out some dark figures standing in the field. I’m startled. Where did they come from? What are they doing? Wait … are they getting closer?

And now I see the black shapes are chasing a tiny black speck. And the speck is running right for me. (Run speck run!). And I can see the tiny people running too, waving tiny hands and crying shouts of alarm but I can’t make sense of their frantic distant sounds; are they saying “he’s friendly!” or “whatever you do don’t move!?”

I hold my breath as the speck becomes a spot. But this spot is not Jane’s friend. This spot is made of fear and foam. It’s the huge black dog of nightmares, of graveyards, of hell. It’s less of a dog, really, than an Omen.

I freeze in the lamplight. I have a dog. I know dogs. Just relax. Be alpha-zen. But I remember, in this split second before the hound of hell arrives to rip this soul from its mortal coil, that dogs smell fear (or is that horses?) but either way I know for a fact that I will surely die, as I am drenched in the smell of Linda Blair. I am wearing terror under my fleece. He will smell it, alright. And he will eat it alive.

And now the Grim is upon me, his giant skull, his stretch of teeth, his wagging tail. Oh the speck and spot of fear! When you see it coming toward you, laugh and welcome it. His name could be Boo, and his foam could be friend.

Cow

I have a lot of work to do today but I feel impossibly tired, like I’ve been standing all night in a crowded stall. It’s 6:00 am and my brain is absent; my body moves in single file toward the day, following the slow herd of morning routine.

Determined to wake more fully, I head out for a walk and bring along my garden sheers; I’ll carry back a handful of something wild and green for my soul to chew on while I work. But instead of walking, I plod and stand and dumbly stare, and manage to make it only as far as a roadside patch at the end of the driveway. And now here I sit, slumped at my desk staring at a blank page and a dusty tangle of half-asters. I’m only part way to industry, and nowhere near inspiration.

My head hangs lower.

You know how you take a drive and see a hillside of cows and suddenly feel connected? You feel so lifted-up that you find yourself squealing and pointing and screaming COW! as if you are whale watching in a pasture? Well the last thing you want to think about just then is how all of their relatives are shuffling and chuting their way toward the end of the world in some slaughterhouse 3 exits down.

It’s hard to hold two opposing thoughts, and today I couldn’t do it. I woke both branded and free, both cattle and cow, and ended so exhausted by the struggle that I got nowhere, just stood stock still; squeezed between art and commerce like Temple Grandin in her hug box.

Oh low is me, I know. But there is only one way to wake, and it’s not in single file. We were made to thunder across plains. We were made to wake up, and be free.

Hungry

I dreamt all night of pancakes. In my dreams, my Dad rose from the dead to build his daughter endless golden towers. All night long he made pancakes, I ate them, and Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth wore tiny “black lives matter!” t-shirts.

He died 30 years ago, so I’m not sure why he dropped by after all this time to make me fat and sick with grief. I’m sure he meant well, but he stirred the batter of my discontent, flipped my mood, and stacked the day against me. Maybe he haunts me because it’s October, or maybe he knows I’m done with greek yogurt.

Either way, I shuffled out of bed this morning into an empty kitchen. I made myself coffee with tears on my face. I sat at a counter still sticky with I-had-a-dream, still wet with mourning breath.

After all these years, and all this time, some things never change; like being hungry for a dream to come true.

Addict

I smoked my first cigarette to fill the tiniest gap; a fragile moment where I couldn’t find a witty thing to say, where eye contact had been accidental and uncomfortable, where there was no distraction from the empty space between me and this strange man. My first cigarette was a cover story for my time away, but he didn’t even notice I was gone. And so I groped for a cigarette and he for a match, and we burned a bridge across our empty hearts.

It’s been a year since I quit smoking, 4 months since I gave up cake, 3 months since I was forced to break it off with Jon Stewart. And still sometimes my own breath feels too insubstantial; I inhale an emptiness, I grope for what used to be, I channel surf my way through time. I yearn for something solid to fasten myself to. And it’s not a goddamned carrot.

I don’t think it’s always the monumental losses that lead to addiction. One giant broken moment you can point to and say “ah HA! That’s why he’s a heroin addict, a smoker, an alcoholic. That’s why she sleeps with Little Debbie.” I think sometimes addiction sneaks into the second between things; between Jon and Trevor, you and a stranger, you and your own sadness.

Love is created in relationship. And so is grief. And in the heartbeat between the two, treacherous and glorious things can happen. Like bridges that last. Or bridges that burn.

Faith

Through my living room window, a tree stands spectacular. It’s luminous, like some yellow light shines from within. Even on this charcoal smudge of a morning it radiates gold, as if it spent the entire summer drinking sun and staggered to this day.

I worry about the coming rain; the treetop sways and nods; the leaves may fall and leave a bare-branched view. And when my company arrives next week my living room will seem bleak. Without distraction, they may notice the stain on the white couch. Without leaf, I may have to justify why I live in New Hampshire. I worry there will be nothing for them to see but a litter of leaves, passed out in gutters.

I strain to see the sky, to count the number of leaves left, to know what’s coming, but I can’t see a thing but what I’ve seen before. I know for a fact the leaves will fall. It’s bound to be winter. I might as well drape a strategic throw over the couch right now. I might as well call ahead and apologize for miscalculating the autumn peak. I might as well check movie times, vacuum, find a job at Starbucks.

Oh, this fragile moment. Just me, hanging from a glowing tree staring at a blank page. Doubt tugs like rising wind. It rustles and scrapes, and threatens to pull me away. I could fall at any moment; topple over like a pile of bills, like I have before.

What do I trust? Where is my faith? It lives in this fragile moment right here. From this silent place, I return to that sun-drunk tree outside my window. I see it sway and sigh and I will wait right where I am, so the light knows where to find me.

Poverty

Yesterday I was asked what poverty looked like to me. It’s a great question, made greater by being asked at all, because there is relativity in the word. I know there is an official number that marks the line between “middle class” and “poor”, but as they are crumbling into one another faster than you can say “Dollar Store”, I can say with certainty that the face of poverty is changing, and may not look like what you think.

For me, the face of poverty is fear. It holds it’s breath at the grocery store checkout, in that endless moment after the card is swiped and before the word “approved” appears.

It wakes you in the middle of the night with thoughts of preventable colon cancer; it flinches when the phone rings, when the car doesn’t start right away, when you feel a cold coming on, when April comes.

The face of poverty mocks you with prescriptions you can’t get filled, the concert you can’t go to, the happy facebook post. It laughs at your annual haircut, your un-pedicured toes, the choices you’ve made along the way.

The face of poverty is pain. It throbs in the broken tooth; it aches to buy your son a gift; it cries for those who have so much less.

Maybe the face of poverty looks different to everyone. But please, let it not look like shame. It does not have to hide in the shadows, nor does it need to be defined in the same way by everyone. Poverty does not only belong to third world countries, or marginalized populations, or the homeless and the starving. It belongs to us. It’s in the face of the single mother, the artist, the aging; it is alive and well on the seacoast; it is everywhere.

When you see the face of poverty, may you look it in the eye with compassion and leave shame to some poor urchin in a Dickens novel. When you become the face of poverty, I hope it softens you enough to ask the question of others; what does poverty look like to you?