one of my closest friends gave me these words today:
nat, you've returned to yourself. i hear it in your voice. you're there again.
and then i asked her how long it had been since me and i, this truest true part of me and the soft machine she animates, were last seen together in such harmony, and her reply was:
months. probably before europe.
and it's true, it has been months.
months.
but for the past three days, no matter how much or little sleep i have gotten, no matter what the pressures or stress of the day, i have woken up with a bit of sunshine pouring through me like a waterfall as i find each day charmed in its own way. and today, while out for two hours on a run along alki beach, i received more waves, more smiles and nods, more high fives {for the record, first high fives during a run ever} and thumbs up from strangers in those ten miles than i think i have ever received in over a year of running. it felt like i was in a mentos commercial or something. seriously. i was almost weirded out by it but my heart was too happy and full to do anything but radiate. except maybe in my mile-9-i-haven't-been-running-enough-lead-legs phase, but then that's when i looked up just in time to see the high five offerings coming my way. my heart was lifted again.
a few weeks ago a friend typed out these simple words to me on skype: are you happy? and in all that welled up in response to those three small words, i realized i have long felt alienated from the grounded sense of wellbeing i used to carry with me pretty much always, and even farther away from that extra bit of beauty and joy that goes along with happiness. but today, now, here, i would love to get that question again.
am i happy?
yes.
yes, i am.
what is it about the nature of happiness...that it came when i was least expecting it. maybe it's a mistake to expect happiness to be a product of the high moments of our lives, maybe it's more like movie music, invisible until a beautiful theme arises from nowhere and surrounds you unexpectedly. like love at first sight. maybe part of its charm is that it takes you by surprise. or maybe it's part of the metamorphosis. another clue that you're on the right path, even when that path is just a walk around the block on a lovely night.
sleepwalk with me is mike birbiglia's new film. i saw it thanks to SIFF tonight {seattle international film festival} and i spent half the film cringing, half the film laughing, and half the film nearly in tears {yes, that's three halves, it was that good}. it hits a little too close to home on so many fronts: facing failure as an artist, what success looks like as an artist {and more importantly, how it's linked to speaking your own truth truth}, relationships, facing even more failure...i could go on.
but i think what is lingering longest about the film was how it didn't end all tidy and wrapped up in a bow but open, in transition, not fixed or perfect but simply on the right path or at least closer to it. and i am beginning to realize that is all we can really ask for.
i know this probably is a bit tangential, but it brings to mind a quote from the tobolowsky files {which i have been meaning to write about since they came on my radar last fall – it's a podcast by stephen tobolowsky filled with entertaining stories that are the vehicle for little gems of wisdom and prose like the one i'm about to give you}:
relationships are the battleground where we fight for what version of ourselves we become: honest or deceptive, independent or lazy. they reflect all of our potential and all of our weaknesses at the same time. like schroedinger's cat, our relationships are the rarefied super-position where we are all things at once. once you fall in love, you are in the box and your story begins. you never know how you'll react to fortune or jealousy or children. you never know until you open up the box. when you start a relationship, you always have ideas about how the other person will broaden your horizon and lift you up, but truthfully a relationship will always redefine itself around the level of its greatest weakness.
this poem was given to me six months ago when i gathered people around for my 29th birthday party. a lovely date {11.11.11} for a lovely party.
at some point during the night my friend handed me a long scroll of brown scraps of paper sewn together and secured with two bobby pins. she said: this is a poem to welcome romance into your life, but not just relationship romance, but romance of all kinds. somehow, i knew the poem was not of that moment, it was not something to unroll and read then, in front of others, and particularly not when i didn't have the proper place to put it. still living as a nomad, i lacked walls to call my own to give it a proper display so i told her i would save it for when i had a home of my own again. save it for some time far away in the spring.
so the winter passed, the play opened, the play closed, the holidays passed and then it got packed up with the last remaining things already not in storage where it would live untouched in a box for a while i traipsed about europe and beyond. as you know, i came back, found a home {or rather it found me} and still the poem waited patiently as i traveled to see thom & the gang. it waited until i came back again. to a home. a place to put things. a place to return to.
but it wasn't an easy transition. searingly hard at times. lonely. scary. weird how something i cried so hard giving up i cried again coming back to. a home. hope. responsibilities. change. these things could break anyone's heart.
and in those first days, i unpacked this scrolled up collection of paper and words, unrolled it, read it and dissolved.
it was perfect. this small time capsule from november, waiting for me on this day, at this time, to remind me of where i have been, where i am heading, what i have to look forward to, and most importantly, how much i need to step out of the tightly reined confines i have built to give myself the illusion of control.
a few days later, a dear friend of mine came to return the plants he had so lovingly tended in my travels, and as he stepped into the space for the first time, as he took it in with a quiet gasp of surprise and awe, i said not of my own volition great things will happen here. not great things that will change the world per say {though i would not mind if that were true}, but great things in my life. great changes, great growth.
later that night over dinner and conversation, i spied the poem behind him and said: i am going to read you something. and spoken aloud for the first time, the words had a weight and cadence i missed on that first read and i knew i needed to speak it again. speak it with an audience to help hold its weight, help hang its phrases from the high ceilings of my new life, shine the words out the windows, and sink its meaning down deep into the floors.
and a few weeks ago, i did. i gathered a few people around me and opened these words up to my life. the beauty, the passion, the false loves, the true ones {oh to be a backwards angel}, the bold recklessness i want to learn in my art and art making, the feeling of being unleashed. we welcomed it all in.
i wish i had recorded the words that night, spoken in my red dress, but i didn't and can't seem to capture it again, so here it is, written for you.
milos by anis mojgani.
let us take a sack of spray paint and spray paint over the paintings
let us dance through paris
kiss in the shadow of the louvre
crawl inside its windows
scroll manifestos over the canvasses
write morse code on the sculptures
roll a sleeping bag on the floor to sleep inside of
tell one another a story by flashlight
unearth everything from before
bury each other inside the other
feed grapes to the ants
light fireworks in the fists of sleeping kings
kill the monarch
break back outside and
find a wall to do all these same things to,
up and upon, against
break the bricks
climb over them
and when the sirens scream
laugh loud
hold my hand
and run fast
run through these streets with me
with a bunch of bottles
a bucket of gasoline
a mouthful of matches
a pocket full of paintings
and a fresh faced batch of policemen
who will chase the fires we are lighting
with a laugh and a shoulder of gold
and i thought that the museums were cemeteries
that the dead paid the walls to hold what we have
so that we could walk through what we once were
where the children take their skulls to turn into gardens
to pluck for forefathers
and farther stars that on some nights resemble an armless mother
praying for her arms to return
every tooth we tear from our jaw
to fling at the black gloved riot soldiers
is another shadow we are trying to lose
where every giggle is filled with lust
let us laugh this night away
and i will fuck you like you were a prayer
that could save me by having my mouth around you
and i will hold you afterwards like
you were the pulpit and i was the sky
and this love that danced between that hardness
was the telephone line of holiness that those two things spoke through
take me into your heart like i was a saint
and you were a face of forgiveness
blooming in a valley destined to sink further
be a river with me
be the storm
the bend in the path
the front porch
the heat in the south
be a boot full of banjo strings
a fist full of written songs
a mouthful of chocolate dust
when they come to take us
stab them between the eyes
do not take your hand from around mine
make a fist with the other
and punch spines like guilt
spit sweat kiss them like a grandmother
howl open mouthed terror love filled
and when they come to cut our hair
and ask to hear penance come from inside of us
say with me loud and trembling
but loud and clear:
i have already emptied myself.
i kissed regret goodbye, took the hands of another backwards angel
and rode backwards into the rain
when the hangman of morrow comes to hang the sun in its daily execution,
say this with me:
sarah
we are apples,
our love is an arrow
i'm unbuttoning my shirt,
painting a circle over my heart
please
just
shoot straight
here is anis reciting his poem {very differently than how i speak it}.
i had a dream that a mom at the hospital just up and left her baby. without a backwards glance she left this adorable, dark-haired and bright eyed perfect baby boy. but what's more is that he was left for me specifically. he was mine. mine even before i held him for the first time and mine even as i held him that first time panicking that i didn't have diapers, a car seat, clothing, ANYTHING prepared for him at all.
and yet there i was about to walk out and accept Responsibility for this gorgeous tiny thing.
i briefly thought of a few people that would want him more than me, who are just dying for a child of their own, but even as the thought entered my mind, the clarity that he was mine spoke firmly and without thinking about it again i gathered myself to make the commitment.
i was terrified, but i knew i would be alright, friends would chip in – surely i knew someone with a car seat they didn't need at the moment, clothing that their kids had outgrown. and as the dream ended, the little guy all swaddled and quiet in my arms, i was ready to accept the thing i am probably most terrified of: being a single mom, and an unexpected-out-of-no-where-entirely-unprepared one to boot.
it was a simple procedure for a simple problem, but it involved slicing into my lip to remove the cyst that appeared out of nowhere mid-february and set up a permanent residence despite all my best efforts to encourage it away.
so yes, it was simple and routine and small peas for the skin cancer specialist who did the honors and has most certainly seen far worse than anything he saw while cutting into me. but as much as i can try to put it into perspective, it felt awful, numbness and all. i think i would much rather have had the blinding light of the procedure room than the claustrophobic gauze shutting me out from the world. and despite the numbness, the body knows, the body smells, the body feels through the thick wall of local anesthetic. i was under assault, fists tightly gripping air, compressing it until it was nothing, face splattered by warmth i don't want to think about, nose filled with that acrid smell of my own flesh burning, my whole mouth tasting metallic as they cauterized the opening with a small electric current. it went so quickly, a couple of repeats of zoe's optimistbut somehow seemed to take forever as well. the world a little looser on the other side. can't sit up for a long while. blood sugar off. need to drive but can't and i didn't think i would need help. who would i have asked for a mid-day ride anyway...
back at home – finally – after a busy evening mumbling words, gingerly eating and drinking what i can, apologetically explaining the weird lopsided lips and stoic face, and completely exhausted. swollen. needing a day off. needing a day off, for gods sake just needing a day off and not just one to catch up. not just one to do work or bills or cleaning. a day off. off. off.
today was not an easy day.
i am tired, empty, and alone and yet all my brain can think to say is:
i am free i am free i am free i am free i am free i am free.
my first memory of my grandfather is when he showed me the moon through his telescope. i must have been four or five at the time and the magic of seeing the dark side of the moon and her craters with such sudden and unanticipated clarity will always stay with me. central to this memory is the moment i realized the moon doesn't actually change shape in the sky, just merely her appearance.
perhaps most significant of all is the feeling that has never left me since that alabama evening so long ago: taking on to my child-width shoulders the burden that there was so much to the world i didn't understand.
not much has changed in 25 years, particularly not my awe at the moon. and tonight, as she made her pass at the earth – this year's perigee – i spent a few still moments along the shore of lake washington, just down the hill from my place, appreciating her magnificence.
i am coming to the end of two weeks of a controlled fall, where lots of big pieces i held gently in my hands suddenly started unraveling all at once in slow motion. nothing i tried to do was able to stop the momentum and chaos reigned for a bit despite my best efforts. but i am grateful for the warning, grateful for the meandering pace, and especially grateful for the slowness of it all giving me the chance to back up my ailing hard drive, save my unedited europe photos, and resign myself to having this stubborn cyst sliced from my lip that won't otherwise let it go.
i'm not sure where i'm going next, but i'll be carried forward by this music which i had the honor of seeing performed live last night by the breathtaking cellist, zoe keating. the videos below will give you just a taste of the magic that is her music as she records every intricate layer of her song, playing with and against herself in such wonderful ways.
yes, it's easy to be optimistic when this is on repeat:
and since i really can't only pick one favorite from the night, i will leave you with this one as well. the title appropriately embracing a sense of fatalism that is of the moment.
