Invisible Therapy

When you step onto the beach there is a feeling of small infinity that wraps around you. It’s like a blanket, the heat, the salt, the tiny point you become when there is nothing but you and the everything else. And all the other points glittering past you, their own stories suddenly unfolding in rhythm with your own, slowly, with the waves. The sand is hot, the water, impossibly green.

Kat and I walk down the beach onto the path where horses carry tourists through a brief mangrove forest. Giant iguanas scuttle through the buttressed roots and falling flowers. Through a path that feels like One Hundred Acre Woods we walk without talking. We don’t have agenda on this, our first day here. There is nothing to do.

We find Pirate’s Cove, a cozy bar with a storied mural carved in teak wood on the back wall. A little girl watches us order two ice cold beers and waves without smiling as we take them to the beach.

We begin the unicorn. This is not a planned activity, but an idea that arrives as we do on the wet sand. There are children near us, here with their families, celebrating this last afternoon of 2018, unbothered by the need to let go of the last year, start afresh, resolve. Time does not yet weigh on them, it does not need to be managed or rebelled against.

In awkward Spanish I tell them we need help finding shells, conchas para los ojos. They stare blankly. Do you want to help? ¿Quieren ayudar? We are making el unicorno. Two of them nod emphatically. They run toward the water to find shells and stones. When they return we decide to build another animal, a tortugacorn.

Manuel uses a large shell to dig up sand and pile it on to the sculpture. Alison decorates the carapacio with shells and leaves. Soon other children join the project. Flowers emerge, mushrooms, mariposas. They teach us words in Spanish. They invent tools for better digging and laugh when one squishes the unicorn’s face with her foot. We make a sun, clouds, feed the animals frutas y insectas, create a story for the growing world.

The place is medicine, the play is healing. This is invisible therapy. In other words, we are using our innate curiosity to create and connect in a way that may seem too easy, lacking expertise or directive. In a world of independence and isolation, quiet subtlety and spontaneous play become even more important. Interdependence, a connection with our surroundings and the people near to us, is vital for survival. Kat and I want to experience and shed light on the invisibilities that connect us to ourselves and to one other through play, nature, and simple engagement with our environment. Our hope is to create an application of therapeutic support in a manner that every community can embrace.

It is an exciting endeavor, nuanced and filled with paradox. Here we navigate cultural differences, privilege, expectation, and perceptions of success. The simplicity of playing on the beach creates an opportunity to incorporate a host of therapeutic elements. From a clinical perspective, building a tortugacorn stimulates:

sensory processing

executive functioning

awareness

innovation

creativity

story-telling: imagination, collaboration, narrative processing

communication

gross and fine motor skills

self-regulation 

skill building - self paced learning

stress management

From a human perspective, we're playing.

How do we create an exchange between the resources that come from the north and the cultural richness that allows for a calmer experience of childhood? Can we humbly facilitate a process of mutual globalization, where the invisible therapy and social permission to simply be in this beautiful place is as valued as the educational opportunities and resources of other countries? How do we best listen to children, wherever we are, letting them lead us in their education and better teach us how to play?

Doris and Me

There is Doris, the bearded dragon to my left clinging to the edge of a river tooth. She basks in artificial sunlight. Her natural habitat is the central desert of Australia. But here she is, glass-boxed and fed, artificially warmed, perched atop the knotted remains of a bald cypress, the tree that characterizes the bayou of Louisiana.

She’s sleepy. Cuddling the light, eyes drifting. Last night, she didn’t find the heated pad covered by sand near the giant snail shell. Instead she slept in a cold corner behind the river tooth. When I picked her up this morning, her body was chilly. I imagined she was happy to share some of my heat. Her tail relaxed, her belly pressed against my warm hand. She cocked her head several times, so that I fell in love with her and imagined she loved me too.

I hope Doris feels comfortable right now, warmed by the Repti Basking Spot Lamp inside Fluker’s Mini Sun Dome. I fed her a few meal worms earlier and she has a bowl of greens in her terrarium. I am sitting warm on this bed. Not long ago I finished a lovely meal of tuna salad on toasted sourdough. I’ll bake cookies then go to sleep after an episode of Deadwood. I’ll wake up with a sense of duty and I’ll write and I’ll research and I’ll fight the nagging suspicion that there is a wilderness within me I do not fully know.

Doris was bred in captivity. Her day is the warmth of ceramic heat emitters and the Reptisun 5.0. She has eaten crickets and fatty mealworms alongside carefully chopped pieces of kale. When she isn’t resting in the heat, she darts around the terrarium, past the shell I found in the swamp and the prairie dog skull I collected near the suburbs of Denver. Sometimes I know she’s stressed. I know, despite her physical needs being met, something isn’t right. Apparently this is normal after a transition.

To the right of the bed is a space heater. Sheepskin rugs meet my feet when I wake. The kitchen is filled with good food, plants and pictures of relatives. I eat well. I make love with a man I love. The city is beautiful. And when I watch her attempting to crawl up the side of the terrarium - glass surfing they call it - I relate. It’s a stress behavior, possible response to irritation at seeing her reflection. 

I am not a lizard. Yet I feel like I am inside a comfortable box. Where is the wild? Where is the end of my reflection shining from polished glass, through computer screens and selfward pointing telephone cameras? Where are the faculties I need to survive in a wild I was built for, but will never know?

Here safety is paramount. In our world it becomes increasingly difficult to connect in real time with the (often wonderful) strangers that surround us. I want to explore. I want to know what I am capable of, what this body can do, can feel. I want to understand how to take care of myself outside of the terrarium and I want to sleep over and over again under the stars. 

What do we lose to a lack of risk? What are we sacrificing to feel always comfortable, safe, at ease? I’m not at ease. I’m glass surfing up the sides of a translucent boundary I don’t know how to cross.

Maybe we can do it together. Maybe we can challenge one another, find the courage to feel awed, adventurous, sexy and capable. I can only make Doris feel more comfortable, but we, we can step outside the reflections of ourselves.

My Father, The Oak Tree

When my grandmother was dying of Parkinsons, she whispered (that was as loud as she could speak) that she wanted to see the tree my grandfather liked so much. It’s a large white oak that stands on the far side of our little frog pond. The tree reaches up, it’s branches proud and perfect, like the antlers of a stag, a king. This is in part because my father cut down the trees that were once in immediate proximity and groomed its symmetrical crown. It has always been my grandaddy’s favorite tree, but now it’s an edifice, a breathing column, backbone of my childhood home, forever strong and present. 

It probably took her a few tries to communicate the wish. Speaking was so strained those last days and my father, to whom she spoke, has a hard time hearing, what with all the chainsaws. When he did understand, he leaned over and picked her up, out of her wheelchair. Her body was small and rigid then, like a wooden doll. He carried his mother outside, onto the deck he built. The view of Grandaddy Oak (that’s what we all came to call it) is grand indeed from up there. The trunk appears pale and silver from that distance, striking against the forest backdrop. The reflection in the pond spreads through the water and the tree becomes even more impossible, shining in two places at once. 

But he continued on, walking the wooden steps and the stone path he made down the hill so many years ago. They went across the green yard that was once a pile of dirt. Past the boulders he so gleefully put there with the rented bulldozers and excavators he taught himself to use. He walked around the pond with my grandmother in his arms, all the way to the base of the tree. And he held her there and she knew he could because he is big and strong. He sat with her under Grandaddy Oak. She said, and maybe this time he heard her the first time because some things were easier for her to say than others, “It’s a good tree.”

I Remember the School Bus

I remember the school bus. The smell of exhaust and tired maple trees. I remember sitting there, kindergarten-small, wearing a purple wool skirt on that hot September morning. I don’t care. I love that skirt. I love things I love and I want that color everywhere. It doesn’t matter that I am sweating. Doesn’t matter that I can’t go upside down and do handstands. Truth is, I would have done handstands right there, even in a skirt. Modesty was alien to me. Still is, but for a mild feeling of discomfort. Tiny blister on my heel while I’m dancing. It’s there, but it’s invisible and usually, I rebel against it, moving passionately with the sting, dancing harder for it. 

Bus is all kids and plastic - sweaty, packed with fresh trapper keepers and mechanical pencils. I look around me. Everyone is first-day nervous, well behaved, sitting-put on their naugahyde benches. Sticky and wide-eyed. Vicky, the bus driver, is strict. Even as the year progresses, those rides are tight. We get silly and laugh, but we stay in our seats. When the back of the bus becomes rowdy, she sends Lesley and me there to keep an eye on the 8th graders. We are so little. I am in love with everybody. 

I can’t talk to them though, the big kids. I just sit there small with Lesley, reporting back to Vicky at the end of the ride. 

Her technique was effective. When the big kids wanted to talk sex and rule-breaking, they did it hushed. I remember being confused a lot. Quietly, I had fantasies of showing myself. Do they know who I am? Do they know I can do handstands, backflips? I imagined myself tumbling down the center aisle. Turning school bus to circus show, dazzling students with a sudden break of routine-transit. Bus seats to gymnastic apparatus; shuttle to traveling stage. I wanted to be seen - all the invisible beauty I could feel, I wanted it out. I imagined this place we all thought predictable, as a dynamic playground. Everything still, waiting to come alive.

the everything I am without having to be

I am alone, wandering through music and literature.  There is magic in the sound of this home.  I dance for the dead and for the squirrels.  I dance to stretch my muscles and to be beautiful, part of the everything that is so perfectly itself here.

I long to be beautiful.  My breasts and skin, the curls in my hair, the lovely wrinkles, they are nothing for eternity.  The dance is somehow part of it though.  The doing nothing also fits in.  Sadness, longing, memories, they are all comfortable here. 

I wish for the sex lost to me through this life of woman-ness.  Years of it still out there, floundering, vying for attention, soaked in confusion.  If I could pull it back, reel it from the water, unbait the hook and put it in my pocket, I would.  A thousand circling and I have been seducing, because I thought I had to.

The Ocean tried to kill me once.  But I am here, alone with my body and nobody to see it - awkward, sexy.  The dance is sprinkled with mistakes and moments, so perfect, they can only exist when unseen.  Spiders and chickadees, the singing frogs and invisible ancestors, they applaud with their presence.  All movement is welcome.  I long for beauty and here, alone, I feel it, the everything I am without having to be. 

I felt it.  Even before the breasts and fine hairs growing between my legs, I felt the hunger.  I felt the eyes on me, waiting (or not) for a taste.  As if I could be tasted, as if one taste could be tried and the whole known. 

This music is so good, the only thing to do is fall in love.  I didn’t know it of course.  I was afraid of being consumed and so I sat safely, cutting off bits of flesh to lure the hungry.  Sex became my great defense.  I had control?  I was empowered?  I became exactly what they wanted.  It was easy, the formula obvious, advertised in language, taught at school, woven through cartoons, decorating the toolshed.  It was there for everyone to see and so I put it on.  It didn’t make the hunger go away, the hunger that was so terrifying.  At least I didn’t have to run.  That is what I thought.

I didn’t run.  I disappeared.  Under the veil of performance I turned my back on love.  In that Ocean, I couldn’t go deep.  I couldn’t swim with the weight of my disguise.

These days, I keep the company of ghosts and quartets.  I am alone.  It suits me.  It’s safe here.  Safe enough to undress.  To abandon hook and sinker, tend my wounds.  Grow back the pieces sacrificed to a sovereignty with little space for innocence.  Shed the armor grown into my skin.  

And (hushed) I secretly wish for a spy.  Some prince to see me.  He hides behind the oak tree.  This hero who knows me from afar as I get to know myself.  There will be no explaining.  I see him!  There, looking back at me, startled at having been discovered.  He watches and, like me, is upside down, hanging from a metal hoop fastened to the moon.  I recognize his likeness.  I relate to the lines in his brow.  When I touch mine, he copies the gesture, delicate in his movement.  He descends the aerial instrument, approaches the evening window.  We place hands on the glass and fall in Love, briefly.  We need nothing from each other so eventually, I pull the shade.  I climb the apparatus, lean back into music and, beautiful, return to the dance.

Nothing into Nothing

When the sun shines on my face in the early morning and dreams rise to the surface, then I know things. Before and after I am blind. Living on the sidewalk, breathing cotton, worried about nothing into nothing. 

In the dream there is a road. But it is the feeling that I remember. The feeling of truth that becomes marionette with every attempt to translate it. The theater of my dreams is a reflection of what is, shadow puppets of fragmented mythology. Oh holiest of arts - the cave, the flicker, the pointing hand.

I am looking at two sides of the highway. There is a center median, separating opposing lanes of traffic. Each side of the thoroughfare is a state of reality. At first I take for granted the death that would come if I were to be hit by a car. I am protecting something - some sense of identity, some figment of myself. 

I don’t remember by what means, but I make it to the center. Traffic passes with quantum speed on either side. There is an empty car here and I am compelled to get inside. Deep grey, worn, evenly bruised so that its shell is nondescript, a prop. 

A dark figure steps from behind the vehicle. It is his job to prevent me from getting in. There is an intention to do me harm. Cold terror as I realize I am trapped. Endless streams of traffic fasten me to the island. The sky is as grey as the car and lines separating the two are like fog - nouns blending into verbs - objects into being. 

Now as I write, I listen to a string quartet - desperate violins, quivering, suspended in baritone warmth. It becomes the score, perfect accompaniment to the feeling of the dream - or the newly invented feeling married now to the music. And so, the looming antagonist of this world dances with me. And I, afraid for life, attempt to maneuver around the car, find my way in, win this deadly game. I am protecting something - some sense of identity, some figment of myself. 

I don’t remember by what means it arrives, but suddenly there is understanding. It is not defined, not a voice from outside, but a blossoming of internal trust. The fear continues, but now it rides alongside the doubt that there is anything that can die. Nothing needs protection. 

In this center median, cars whizzing past, it is available, the understanding that death is not an ending to anything real. The other two sides of the highway, while safer in one sense from the perilous school of this middle world, are brilliantly constructed sets - facades of importance. Here, I suddenly know I cannot die, that I will come back to continue whatever journey captivates me. Even if I don’t know why.

I will get into this car. I step out from behind the driver’s side door. The cold, wet air is all over. There is a metallic taste in my mouth. I see the top of his head, hair grey, like everything. The violins are softer now. Budding courage pulls me from the habit of self defense. It is the gun I can taste. It flashes in his hand - eyes hard, black. Fear begs me to hide again, but the trust has grown too big for that. And now, despite the tension, a playful etude calls me forth. He holds up the weapon, hand shaking, tasked with this, his mission. And just as I cannot keep myself secret, he must shoot. Some divine bond holds us to these roles.

A million years fill the moment between the exit of the bullet and its entrance into my chest. And then, bloodless, breathless, I die. Just before or exactly when this happens, the knowing is there. The trust, triumphant. Blind to sight, I feel the highway, the sides, the traffic, blurring into nothing. And then, bloodless, breathless, I am born into the same moment, crouched behind the same car, knowing he is there, ready. 

Over and over again we dance, enact our scene, until the courage that was at once so painful, is easy. There is no hesitation. There is no car, no man. I am not there. 

And with the sad adagio of our string quartet, the morning sun shines on my face and shakes the knowing. As I wake, I am again living on the sidewalk, breathing cotton, worrying about nothing into nothing.

Morning After

Why write a feeling, if only to make it go away?

Why foster contentment in the rising paradox? Why not allow the need, the sorrow, the suffering to pour onto the page without apology?

Unjustified, unexplained.

Because a happy clause suppresses longing. The easily written lullaby subdues desperation and quiets unanswerable questions. 

I sit at the purple table. There are rhythmic boots and a radio voice.  Homes blue and yellow, unshucked and buttoned pretty. The old woman bent over with (what I thought were) years. Instead, it’s the leaf blower, pulling her lithe body into an aged shape.  She is not yet strong enough to be weak.

Nor am I. But I want to be. 

Open. To be possessed, to be inhabited.

Before, I wanted to spill into the world. I needed to justify my existence, share myself naked, unasked for. Now there is an inverse desire, a reckless invitation.

Penetrate me, fill me, understand me without my doing. I want to surrender to you.  

But I am not lover enough to trust your unknown. You, with your imperfections and desires, unseen agendas and optimism…all the things I play upon for the seduction. If you are charmed, you are untrustworthy. I need the unattainable man. One who will not be sirened.  

I need to be taken.  

Who is brave enough for that? Or even wants it these days?

So I become the hero, making love to myself on rainy nights.  Dressing in lace, dancing, hand sliding down my stomach to the sound of Hendrix guitar. Sweat on my thighs and the back of my neck. Breathing for the ficus and the philodendron. The longing slaughters my orgasm and makes it safe, makes it possible. 

Morning after, I return to the words, my journal, fat delusion of Nature’s pandering. There is no compass, no morality, no truth. So I write it. And when it sounds good, I feel better. Then worse, of course. Because truth is always denied in words and knowing evicts all that is known.