We Call It Confusion

I just got off the phone with my cousin.  She is 9 and 1/2 months pregnant.  I love her. 

She doesn't know who is arriving.  Can you imagine that?  Really picture what it might be like to have a human living inside you?  Some mysterious guest you have helped grow in a wonderland of endometrial tissue and prolactin?  The uterus is an open space waiting to incubate heroic possibility.

On Valentine's day eve I danced with some beautiful women to some epic 80s beats.  A break dancing troupe occupied the dance floor, circling into an impressive performance of inverted acrobatics and pop and lock shoulder snaps.  We spun around the happy crowd, voguing in another fashion, reinforcing the monumental truth that really "girls just wanna have fun." 

Their handstands inspired us and we decided - when they left - to invert ourselves, going upside down in a headstand trio, touching our feet and creating a six-pointed star of space. 

"What do we do now?"  One asked.  And us other two giggled, not knowing.

Suddenly, a fourth woman ducked into the space created by our upside down shape and began dancing her ass off.  It was the perfect center to our flower.  Perfectly unexpected.  All we did was make space.

My friend Kat - she not only shares the name, but looks like me and cooks like me and enjoys making puppets (like me) - she just popped into the room with a gift.  It was a doll we had bought earlier at the Good Will.  When we found her she had a porcelain face, sewn into her soft body.  Attached like a mask, the rigid expression begged removal.  The doll sits next to me now, blank faced and beautiful.  A canvas for the myriad expressions that might touch the cranial architecture of a brown haired prairie girl.  Space, possibility.

It takes strength to make space.  It takes courage to hold it without agenda, a willingness to welcome the unknown.  Most of the time I call it confusion and try to escape it, to fix it, to plan over it. 

Lately (luckily) I find myself confused more often.  I find the strength, the courage, the curiosity to let confusion be.  Most of the time, it reveals itself as the fertile space for whatever I didn't know I always wanted to see. 

Naughty Truth Treasures

My computer is about to die.  I have 21 minutes to write something inspiring and brilliant, something that makes me worthwhile, that helps me feel like a good girl, something that might inspire you to break free of imaginary prisons. 

I have 20 minutes to write something true.

It's a little embarrassing to talk to you this way.  If you were here, I could register your response.  I could tell you a story with my body, waving arms around and speaking in a witch voice or with a German accent.  I could listen.  I could look into your eyes and hold your hand and we might not even speak.  That would be okay.  I like just being with you. 

But now I'm letting you in - the faceless you, the audience, the five people (or more?) who may be indulging in this distraction - I'm letting you in on secrets and thoughts.  What are you supposed to be doing?  Surely reading this is not on your to-do list.  Unless it's you Mom.  And I know as much as you would like to, as often as you add it to your list, you don't read it.  That's okay.  Knowing that allows me to share secrets with the others, like this one: you know how I promised to not have sex until I was 16?  Well this one time when I was 15 and 3/4 I mounted my boyfriend (you know who he was) and I let it slide in part way and oh my god it felt so good so I let it go in a little deeper and it was like I had these lights on the inside of my vagina that had never been turned on before and as he entered my body a rainbow exploded inside me.  It lasted three seconds, so it didn't really count.  But it counted enough to keep it a secret.

Nine minutes left.

Secrets can be like that - naughty truth treasures kept harmlessly in furtive pockets. 

Sometimes, they aren't like that though.  Sometimes secrets (when we don't realize we're keeping them) are ruthless. 

Why do I do I turn away from truth?  Because I have practiced since I was a little girl, swallowing it, doing the opposite, telling my parents, teachers, friends, the opposite of what is real.  No I don't masturbate.  No, I didn't break it.  Yes I like chicken, see I ate it all, I'm a good girl.  No, I didn't just smell my own pee.  I didn't pick my nose and eat it.  I wasn't curious about what it would be like to kill that animal, to think about suicide, to have a sex dream with my brother, to want to scream in the movies, to punch Mrs. White - the one who keeps telling me magic is not real - right in the face. 

Many people I know have been kidnapped by Truth.  It pulls up in a van with no windows and breaks into homes, takes away the precious, comfortable, expensive things.  It tears us apart (like an unstoppable asteroid) so nothing is left but a terrible mess and some bruises. 

The worst part though is the shame.  It's knowing all along that truth was there, whispering itself.  It's the difference between the kind of secret I've kept from one person and the kind that I've kept from myself. 

3 minutes.

The truth is this:  we know what is best for us.  Until we (yes that's you Katrina) find the courage to live what is real, get honest about our secrets and stop caring what our mothers (and everyone we imagine won't love us unless...) think, we will be subconsciously waiting for the inevitable visit, holding breath until our realities are trashed and violently reordered.

Hold my hand, wherever you are.  Tell me what it is that inspires rainbow explosions inside your body and follow that.  We can help each other.  We don't have to prove anything.  We don't even have to talk. 

0 minutes.

I like just being with you, whoever you really are.

Make Death Worth It

So here we are - you and me - resting, sitting, wondering about what is next to come on the platter of what is next to come.  I sit with a warm tea warming my right foot.  It's green tea, but I don't really want to drink it because I am enjoying this feeling of tired.

Today is Valentine's day.  I don't know what to write about.  In fact, I have been dawdling all morning trying to avoid writing altogether.  I made a smoothie.  Then I memorized all the ingredients on the special powder I used in it.  I checked my email seven or eight times.  I stretched my back by positioning my body upside down on the staircase.   I sat in a squat while reading the abstract of an essay about the relationship between certain pollutants and type 2 diabetes.

I popped a pimple at the end of my right eyebrow.  I made another cup of tea.  I looked through the refrigerator for cream and found three containers of sour milk products which I brought out and intended to throw away, but got sidetracked and forgot about them. 

I plucked a few hairs from my chin.  I sent some text messages.  Now, here I am...thinking about food, thinking about mermaids, contemplating dreams.

Among other things, including (but not limited to) images of stealth bombers practicing loop-d-loops in a pristine sky above a dirty beach, I dreamed a dagger was thrust into my heart.  Through the protective barrier of my ribcage, the implement entered my back with keen force, then twisted with a combination of subtlety and confidence that indicated skill on the part of the stabber.  I did not feel physical pain.  I attempted to identify my assailant, but could not easily turn around.  When I did eventually, I was met with faceless onlookers. 

"Vengeance!" my brain yelled, "Who has done this?  There must be retribution!" This was the thought, a forceful mechanism for comfort in a moment of great confusion.  It was the logical thing to do in a time of coming undone.

"Attack back!" a voice sounded, though I knew there was nothing left to defend, nothing left to save.  The humble realization slowed my frenzied movements.  For a moment I wondered if I had stabbed myself. 

I sat down in the space that was now becoming blurry, much like the physiognomies of those nearby.  Alone.  A question arose, "Now that I'm dying, what do I wish I had done in life?  What am I most proud of?"

I woke after, the sensual remnants of heart piercing lingering as I lie in a soft bed.  Why is it scary to do what I love?  Why is it scary to love?

I ask you now, whoever you may be, is it as scary for you to love?  To love yourself so much that you give yourself the gift of doing what you love?  Or loving what you do? 

Is it like that for you, kind reader?  The experiences that highlight mortality are those which so vividly illustrate the importance of love?

One of the scariest things for me (as well as a thing I love most) is to write.  So I give myself a gift today: I promise to write a blog every day for the next month.

If you have certain things you like to read, let me know.  I'll write those.  I can write you stories, or sensual encounters, I can include recipes, advice, my anxieties, yours.  Manifestos, diatribes, reflections on academic abstracts regarding the relationship between pollutants and type 2 diabetes. 

If you like I will write specifically to you, something special - not faceless - personal. 

Because - chances are - I love you.  And I love myself enough to indulge in the ridiculous universal love that is always driving a knife into my heart and demanding I do what I love most.  Today we celebrate (or don't) Valentine's Day, the marrying saint, VD, a famous mobster massacre. Today and in the days that follow, let us love the shit out of ourselves and do something (maybe it's scary) that makes death worth it.

A Speculative Guide Written While Privy to a Small Circus Festival in the French Countryside

How We Live

1.  We smell flowers.  It's a good starting place.  Soon we'll notice the delicate aromas of other things too - like grass and people and whatever happens to be riding the wind.
 
2.  We stretch.  Our faces, our lungs our inner thighs, our chests, our hands. 
 
3.  We enjoy, dance to and play music.  Singing alone counts.  Rundancing counts.  Silence counts.
 
    3a.  Play!  In play we find ourselves and in ourselves we find life.  We see the world and recognize the absurdity of purpose taken too seriously.  The paradox is this: service, political redesign, and artistic manifestation require the integrity that is built on a foundation of innovation and trust.  How do we grow these?  (see 3a)
 
4.  We eat and cook (or prepare) the best food possible - food that grows in the ground near where we live or are eating it.
 
5.  We think about bees.  We consider them.  We taste honey like it is what it is.
 
6.  We listen to people.  Especially to those six years and younger, sixty years and older.  There is  wisdom here and there are good stories.
 
    6a.  Listen to and tell stories.  Wild stories, simple stories, dream stories and sad stories.  "Mythological thinking helps us face the inevitabilities of our lives." ~Joseph Campbell
 
7.  Give.  When we do, we realize we have more than imagined.

Scrambling to Get My Pants Down in the Cafe Water Closet

The streets are wet and crowded.  I walk down them this morning pressing a nonchalant hand against my crotch.  It is a very specific position, its execution complicated because I am in motion.  The delicate dance of halted urination.  Right where the thumb meets the wrist, I affectionately refer to it as the "urethra block."  The pose in its entirety is called "Please please please please please…." because that's what I am saying every time I have to use it. 

This morning I almost made it.  It's always those last three seconds - scrambling to get my pants down in the cafe water closet, still wearing my backpack, legs shaking, face sweating, I'm so close!  I let out a little squirt. 

It's not the first time.  This dance is not unfamiliar, especially in this city.  I don't often pee my pants (and really, I just left a little dribble on my panties, which I immediately removed), but it happens. 

One time, after a long drive and 1/2 hour of desperate toilet searching in sticky July at three in the morning in Downtown Brooklyn, wearing a leaf-printed polyester onesie which prevented me from squatting behind a car without being completely naked, I leaned against a building and fully let it go.  People passed by (thankfully inebriated) and I pretended not to be peeing in my pants, which means I smiled a lot while doing it. 

In New York, people are everywhere.  A quick private pee is rarely possible with female anatomy, my predilection for one-piece pant suits, and this dense population.  Everywhere people are honking their horns, blaming each other for inconveniences, pushing, assessing status, sucking in their cheeks, competing for professional positions, unknowingly policing one another for minor social faux pas like public urination. 

The city is loud.  It's hard to sleep sometimes with all the noise.  The smell of garbage and pee is common - which, admittedly (depending on my prior consumption of liquids and the outfit I happen to be wearing) sometimes makes me a little jealous.  Rent is high, jobs are demanding, woody perennials are scarce, stars are hard to see.  So why, when I could be closer to a forest, fresh air, the naked sound of wind and birds...why, when at least once a week I am practicing the "Please please please please please" position because there are not any proximal trees offering themselves for a tête-à-tête, do I live here? 

***

Cities are people places.  Manhattan is people-made.  What makes it beautiful - epic bridges, subway systems, grand performances, universities, high-rise architecture, the 800 languages, the kaleidoscope of various cuisine, legendary visual art, sundry music, the museums, even the parks - these are people things.  This may seem a minor revelation, but when (after a noisy, sleepless night, getting stuck in honky rain morning traffic, and peeing my panties) I realized this, something in me relaxed.  I stopped resenting the decision to come back. 

Why am I here?  Because I love people.  And, on some level, be it conscious or un-, other people are here because they love people too.  I love people so much, it's hard to stop myself from trying to hug strangers...and they are everywhere.  Everyone is full  of stories and dreams that spill onto the urban landscape and make New York what it is.

But it's not what people create that make this city glow...it's them, it's us.  We live here together, stacked on one another in giant buildings, shuffling around in underground mazes, making love, crying, dancing, pooping, heck, some people are even peeing their pants on the street.  Despite stoic faces and well-built personal bubbles, we are still here, all of us always breathing at the same time. 

If I am in Love...

My birthday is a day for being alone. 

I drove through the hills of Marin county - bending trees articulated their branches across the landscape, offering gestures of conversation to the sky, providing arced resting spots for birthday vagabonds. 

Now, the moist loop, be-lichened and sweet smelling, welcomes travelers.  It gives a comfortable perch to purple corduroy.  It listens happily to an off-key rendition of Amazing Grace.  It wholly accepts an impromptu poem that began like this:

If love is space,
    then I am in love.
   
If I am in love, then so is the loneliness.  It is in love,
    with me.

***   

I ate California fruits - the waxy tang and orange cream flesh of a perfect persimmon.  I savored an avocado, grassy and sweet.  It was the best avocado I ever tasted.  I peeled it, exposing its buttery inside, biting it like I would a giant hard boiled egg, enjoying the smooth green smear on my cheeks and squish between my fingers. 

I left the grove of trees and drove down to the ocean.  Running along the surf, I flirted with a vulture, I let the icy tongue of the Pacific chase my feet with its swelling tide.  I found a large rock, stood behind it and took off all of my clothes.  A mother and her son were walking nearby, so I used a superhero cloaking device and disguised myself as a naked woman.  They couldn't see beyond the absurdity of midday November skinny dipping on a public beach.

I squealed as waves crashed against my body.  I turned to face the land, reached my arms out and closed my eyes, falling back into the water.  My bottom met the sandy floor.  I tried to imagine all the habits, addictions, and harmful patterns in my life washing away. 

***

I made my way from beach to car to winding road.  I drove to the town where he said he lived, the beautiful man I met at the desert festival.  One of the elusive spirits that stir my loneliness.

Clouds hovered in the hills and each time a dip in the road brought be below the dense mist, I discovered a hidden forest, giant trees reaching skyward, surreptitious fungi peeking out from behind their roots. 

When I arrived the sun was setting.  Population 350...Elevation 33 feet.  I began at the radio station.  The rain had started and I peered into the cozy room, lined with tapes and records and other labeled stackables.  Three people inside were singing a beautiful rendition of happy birthday to a gray-haired woman.  She tilted her head to the side, clasped her hands, and thanked her friends.  She saw me through the glass and beckoned I come inside. 

"Happy Birthday!" I said. 
"Thank you."
"It's my birthday too."  Everyone laughed. 
"Ha! You don't say.  Happy Birthday to you."

After I had left - nobody knew of my man - a young woman ran outside to meet me.  The rain was real now.  She held a newspaper above her head. 
"I love that you're doing this," she said.  "I love this kind of thing, these adventures.  Why don't you give me your name and email?  I'll keep my eyes/ ears open just in case I come across him."
When I had given my information, she hugged me, crinkling the soggy paper against my back. 
"Good luck."

***

I went to the creamery.  This town - 350 people - has a creamery.  I went inside and temporarily forgot all about the mission to find my beloved.  Wheels of beautiful cheese were stacked in the corner.  Here is the fresh white fuzz covering the triple cream...and here, over here we have the dumplings of cheese washed with chardonnay, flavored with the genius of another ambient bacterium (one, I learned, is in special abundance here, so the cheese cannot be duplicated in other areas).  Over there is the seasonal variety, a cheese made only with the milk from Jersey cows, then rolled in forest mushrooms.  And if you sample this one, mmmm, one of my favorites, your tongue will go wild with the sharp tang - almost like a goat's cheese - it goes so well with warm honey and a sprig of thyme.  (I sampled every one.)

I skipped around the gourmet shop and came across a section where local artists sell their wares.  Hats, gloves, earrings, and lingerie adorned the colorful corner.  The woman at the stand did not recognize my man by his description, but guided me to the nearby gift store.  I bought a sun hat, put on some lipstick, and wandered, cheese-belly-full out into the rain.

It was dark.  The store was so full of things it was difficult to move.  Antique relics, mood rings and figurines shaped like animals all waiting for the relevant moment to tell (or invent) their stories.  None of them had seen the person for whom I searched.

In the bookstore, I read a few pages of a book called Mycophilia and admired an illustrated version of Pinocchio.  I asked the woman behind the register. 

"Hmmm, don't know anybody like that.  Mark, do you know anybody like that?"
"Hmmm, I don't, but that gentleman," he pointed behind me, "he knows just about everyone in town.  Jeremiah, this young lady is looking for somebody."

Jeremiah turned around and stood near to me.  Our eyes met and my heart made an attempt at jumping from my chest into his.  I stuttered as I spoke to him, trying to describe the connection, the festival, the dancing in front of an old timey house on wheels where they bake cookies in the oven and a gypsy fiddling group plays on the front porch. 

He listened quietly and gazed into my eyes, periodically covered by the wide brim of my wet sunhat as I blushed and dipped my chin.

"I don't know anybody like that," he said, "but I'll text my friend.  She may have some idea."
I reached out my hand and placed it inside his.  We both stopped breathing.  He squeezed.
"T-thank you."

It was time for me to go.  I was borrowing a friend's car.  Jeremiah called me shortly after I departed.  I missed the call, but he left a message, asking if I wanted to spend the evening with him. 

A gentle fragrance, the one of sweet longing, came in through a crack in the window.  I listened to his voice.  I would spend the night with you, Jeremiah, if I wasn't so in love…

If I am in love, then I am in love with this warm loneliness.

The Antihelp Manifesto

“Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols … Art tells gorgeous lies that come true.”
~Hakim Bey

We call ourselves “The Antihelp.”  The exposure of parts of us that want to sweep in and play rescue.  While our insecurities might be assuaged in the moment of felt helpfulness, we recognize such an approach as contradictory to service.  Ultimately, it is rarely relevant and works against creative social opening.

The Antihelp interrupts a cycle of aid that overlooks the reciprocal energetics of world systems and dependency.  We do not participate in global Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, poisoning communities so that we may eventually offer flag-bearing antidotes. We are not blinded by pity and virtue.  We play gratefully in the sweet particularity of culture and pinch one another at any attempt to fix or exploit.  We are interested in healing through inquisition, participatory governance and recognizing opportunities for creativity within conflict.

1.  Intention without direction.  (a.k.a. play).

Change is inevitable.  We stop trying to direct it.  Our efforts are not a series of superficial reactions, but arise within a container of intelligent improvisation.  We are honest about and willing to explore the depths necessary to identify and rebuild obsolete or dysfunctional structures, however, we embrace the process of exploring itself as a primary strengthener of community.

2.  Participation.

We do not play alone.  We need people to participate to build connections.  Change is not relevant unless it’s relevant.
We listen.  With our bodies, our ears, our minds.  We listen.  To each other, to our dreams, to everyone involved.

3.  A sense of humor.

We graciously accept benevolent disparagement.  If not graciously, we expect to be made fun of for reacting to it and/ or throwing tantrums.  The willingness to take the piss out of ourselves, our friends and our projects, dissolves righteousness.  We make absurd demands for laughter, regardless of circumstance.  When we are laughing more than not, all pain is worth it.

4.  Radical Inclusion.

When the uncool, the curmudgeon, the foreign, the weak, the indomitable, or those perceived as threatening ask to be involved, we spread our arms and make vulnerable our tender viscera.  “Bless your heart, you asshole, I love you!” we shout as we embrace participants and onlookers.  Everyone who understands the premises of this community and wants to engage is welcome.  No preconceptions to defend exceptions.  As long as we can tickle each other, it works.  Genetic, cultural, ideological diversity makes for a healthy party.
We love hypocrites.  Because we love making fun of them.
We dissolve the boundaries between helper and helpee…celebrating their obsolescence.
We appreciate radical inclusion as self reflexive: by treating others this way, we get to accept all the parts of ourselves we deny or compartmentalize and judge.  As we open our arms to everyone, risking our well being, we reintegrate ourselves.
We take care of each other.

5.  Wonder

wonder:  a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful.

curiosity:  a strong desire to learn something.

We are honest with our reactions to a space, a circumstance and a people.  We have a multi-disciplinary approach to the perception of beauty.  We encounter circumstances present in the physical and social environment with awe and respect.

Likewise, we are unwaveringly committed to feeling emotional, physical, psychological sensations that arise within our experiences.  We do not deny them, nor do we silence them in others.  We marvel at individual and group reactions.  Anything that arises on the multidimentional spectrum of pain and pleasure, we meet with wonder and curiosity.  We accept the pain.  We follow the pleasure.
We learn with our bodies.
We believe in magic.

6.  Gratitumility.

Even though we have ideas about what is good for us, we meet people with gratitude for any inclusion. We recognize that when we are visitors, strangers, outsiders or aliens, the home-people dictate what kind of help we offer.  We bring the willingness (and appreciation) for being accountants and shit shovelers if that is what is asked, rather than thinking we can offer something better.
We do not identify as “community builders.”  Instead we are lucky visitors who get to participate in the reveal of what is already happening in a space.  We come with playful intention, curiosity, a sense of humor, and a commitment to work hard.
We take our shoes off when entering.
We offer help, but treat it as a privilege when it is accepted and directed.  We come with open minds and creative approaches to problems, but we do not impose.

7.  Respectful Autonomy.

We do what we want to do.  As long as it is harmless, we indulge our passions freely.   As visual artists, we make; as dancers, we move; as chefs, we cook, as musicians, we play.  When people are attracted to what feeds us, we offer them plates.
Creative endeavors such as those expressed in art, music, circus and dance bring opportunities for play, wonder, and a connection with our bodies.  We consider one question of paramount importance in any approach to problem solving and conflict resolution:  “What do we do for fun?”