cut

evidently my older sisters fought my mom a lot when it came to brushing their hair. too much work. too many tangles. too many tears. i'm guessing here because i was too young to remember at that point, but it must have been something pretty dramatic to give my mom the resolve to maintain my untidy and unfeminine shorn cut that followed me around through early grade school.

what i do remember clearly are all the attempts at reasoning with her, all the promises to brush my own hair, swearing myself to silence no matter what the effort was to hold in the pain of grooming – anything to keep it longer than boy-short and awkward. i remember the injustice of it, of my lack of say in what happened to my own body. i remember the disappointment in yet another hair cut and the envy i harbored for courtney-from-kindergarten's chin length hair curling in gently toward her face. i knew her hair would have been an acceptable compromise between the tangle-free length my mother insisted and my desire to look like a girl if only i could get my mother to understand.

somehow even then, i felt like my hair was tied to being a girl or perceived as a girl {i very well may have been called a boy once or twice in that 0-6 range and certainly remember a friend's younger sister being called a boy and my well of shame in empathy for her}. even then, i felt lacking in femininity despite not even knowing the word.

as soon as i was allowed – about 3rd grade or so – i kept it long. shoulder length slowly became even longer – something to pin up. braid. ponytail. brush long down my body. it was always everywhere, but i embraced its imperfect disorder and loved the messy bun of hair achieved with one rubber band and a practiced set of twists and turns that was the perfect unity of balance and disorder.

the first time i cut it shorter {chin length} was in my best friend's kitchen toward the middle of high school. the request was shoulder length. she was wielding the scissors. i was there, emboldened by her daring hair colors and cuts: bright pink one day, the next it might be platinum or just as easily raven. she was bold and beautiful and i wanted to own some of that daring, but only to a point. unfortunately that point got crossed as one uneven side led to another, and suddenly the hair is up above my shoulders and that's long after i had begun crying from the first snip. luckily she was able to get things relatively straight before it passed my chin. for several years after that incident, i kept it the longest it's ever been {more than halfway down my back}.

wanting to be bold and being bold are two totally different things.

i'm not sure exactly where the idea came to chop off my hair this time around. perhaps it was as simple as needing a new haircut. perhaps the motivation to return to my normal hair color was a factor. i think seeing both anne hathaway and charlize theron {particularly the latter, a tall beauty as she is} helped i'm sure, and about a month ago, for the very first time in my life, i seriously considered taking the blade to my hair and hacking it off for real. as in: above my chin. as in: a bob cut. as in: boy-length hair.

i did some research, pinned some images on my underused pinterest board, found a replacement hairstylist after my last one moved away, screwed up my courage, and then almost backed out.

wanting to be bold and being bold are two totally different things.

but somehow i found myself in a salon chair today, musing on connections and sensory input in a technology driven culture, being grilled on some of the details of my personal life {i adore my new stylist for many reasons}, and watching a razor seemingly haphazardly take off all of the dyed bits and about 90% of my length, at least in back.

it was a scary process as relaxed and entertained as i was. looking at myself in the mirror while my wet hair is plastered to my face is one of the least flattering views of myself ever. so to have to sift through that bulbous view of my cheeks as i curiously peered back at what is emerging...it was a hard hour in the chair. down to the last minutes. even after everything was done and the hair was given life again through some pomade and hair dryer. i still wasn't sure.

and as i left the salon, self-consciously running my hands through the absence on my right side particularly {she left a little length on my left}, i still couldn't quite make of it who i am underneath. one part the shy elementary school girl still wanting the sixth grade boy to notice her. one part the stubborn girl just wanting to look like a girl. and one part the woman i am, excited by a change, conscious of sloughing off the past year's worth of growth {physical and emotional}, and relieved at letting go of an 8 year dying habit.

but tucked away in some out of the way corner of my brain, i am also aware that i am letting go of something i have long been hiding behind in my own little ways. boldness aside, that is a victory in and of itself. my step is a little firmer. my gaze, stiller.

the shit storm

a note to the reader: this is a vivid dream i had last night that, in the way of dreams, addresses things i don't normally deal with using language you won't otherwise find here on my blog – mainly the image of shit and the use of the word 'shit.' it's what i dreamt, it's the word that occurred to me in the dream, and so i present it here to you as part of one of the most symbolic, meaningful, and in its own way, comforting dreams i've had in years.

i was in a restroom stall having just used the bathroom. as i flushed the toilet, the water began rising instead of falling, pushing up a dense and massive pile of shit. having never clogged a toilet in my life, i was horrified and embarrassed, but that gave way to alarm as the water began rising faster and faster and quickly began overflowing in this swirling vortex.

just as the water and shit began spilling out onto the floor, i realized the whole bathroom was shaking and that's when it occurred to me that i was in the middle of an earthquake. drenched i fled the bathroom running through the building looking for the way out, puzzled and even alarmed by the people in the halls cowering passively in doorways waiting for the earthquake to end. why aren't you doing something?! i yelled at them inside my head. we should all be going outside into the open where it's safe! but they were all motionless and in shock as i frantically passed them.

in my rush to safety, the earthquake ended. wet and even though i couldn't see it, i knew i was covered from my waist down, i returned to the bathroom to clean off. i was back in the cramped stall as the excrement speckled water quickly drained away and it was about then that a man joined me. i remember his hair being mid-length and unstylish, his face unattractive, and his manner vaguely annoying, but i also felt a deep kinship and feeling of connection to him. i knew he was a true friend despite what he appeared on the surface and he was there to keep me company as i sat naked on the seat of the toilet pumping handfuls of soap from the dispenser and covering the lower half of my body with handful after handful of soft, white liquid-soap. then i slowly washed the soap away, one body part at a time, cleaning any trace of the grime from my body.

when i came out of the stall, my friend was gone, and in his place, lying down on the floor was the first real love of my life. one of my first friends. my first soul mate. and despite only have been met with rejection or disinterest throughout high school and college, he was also the first truly painful and un-requited loved of my life. and though now i love him with the simple constancy i love my brothers, for several years i held his memory as the one i loved but was frustratingly 'never good enough to have.'

in this dream, he was lying on the ground, his back toward me, but somehow not closed off from me. quite the opposite. he was just there. vulnerable. spent, but present. quiet and calm.

i knelt down behind him, looking at his back, feeling his openness to me, and as i cautiously reached my hand out toward him, resting it gently on his back, finally able to touch him, the dream ended.

sieve - slow sifting

editing my short film has been hard. i have always been a harsh critic of the contours of my face and the broad sway of my gait, so hours of footage with an abundance of both has been an emotional trial. the first day i began sifting through the footage, one of my best friends, sitting on an adjacent couch, watched me writhe inside, trying my hardest not to feel the restless shame coursing through me. it had already held me back for months, but i still couldn't avoid it. and even with that first victory over inertia, it's taken me more than a month to fully step back into the project again. a month of avoidance and distraction. a month of sitting and mulling about it in the back of my mind. but not actually looking at it. not actually doing it.

until today. 

at the gentle promptings of another friend currently walking the hard road of a passion project of his own, this morning found me at my desk with the project hard drive. finally. and it was still hard, but a little easier than last time. and after a half an hour of enforced focus, i set my alarm for 20 minutes and vowed i wouldn't check in on facebook, email, or my phone until the buzzer set me free. but it only took me another few minutes until i found the below frame and suddenly felt....

felt a lot. 

something new and exciting and confident, and an amazement pure and full: these are my features, this is my face, but where did the purpose come from? the fierceness? and what about those lines? the life and stillness of the frame as a whole, it swooped me up and carried me along until i realized lines and phrases and editing choices were scattering themselves into notes on a page. today is the day a new life began for this project and i'm not exactly sure where it will take me. 

in the meantime, i'm very grateful to my two andrews, one my collaborator and the other my guardian angel to this project.

on anger

i am not afraid of anger anymore.
mine.
yours.
my father's.

especially my father's.

i realized this in the car this january after a wonderful visit with my father while he was here over christmas. driving him back to my sister's on the last day, he suddenly began raging at a small and inconsequential request. raging to the point of dark thoughts and darker threats. he considered opening the door and exiting the car currently driving down a busy freeway to never coming back to the united states ever again except to see my brother {who quietly sat in the back seat next to my mother, waiting for the moment to pass} because we were all just here to squash his voice, no one understands him, he is a failure, and the list rambled on.

this outburst was one i was familiar with as a child – as common around in our home as morning edition and oatmeal. but this one was the first i had seen up close in a while and came in the wake of a spectacular visit. a week ago i invited a handful of my closest friends here in seattle to share a meal with my family. and on that night i stood, open and loving and proud of this lovely collection of people, unashamed of the things i knew my father would say and no longer even thinking of the way i feared my family might be. this was the moment the two became one.

i made a brief speech before inviting people to dig in. rare for me, but it wasn't premeditated at all. just spontaneous and raw as i stood as part of a circle of "the family i'm stuck with {my blood} and the family i've chosen {my closest friends}." already tearing up before i even opened my mouth, i paused,  after my small attempt at humor about being stuck with my family. and in that moment of suspended vulnerability in front of so many {there were 13 adults and one precocious 17 month old} i spontaneously threw my arm around my father who was standing next to me and hugged myself into his shoulder, curling my head into him like i would, overcome, as a child. and it was just that short, spontaneous rush of emotion as i laid out so full and bare before so many, that prompted the small physical gesture of the hug.

my father called me the next morning in tears, telling me how much it meant to him. to have one of his daughters hug him like he hasn't been hugged by one of us since we were little children. that small moment of pure feeling we all once knew, suddenly shared between two people who have lived decades with walls slowly accruing between them.

so the violent temper tantrum coming from the passenger seat not a week later took me off guard with force. faced with illogic, i tried to reason with it, tried to argue with it, tried to stop the brute force flying around the small space of my car. my mom coached me from the back to just let it pass and after a minute or so of futile efforts, i listened.

suddenly met with no resistance, it only took a few more minutes for the rage to pass. and as the dust settled around us, straining the air we breathed, i skattered it away with the calm truth that i spoke into the silence: dad, you know, the only thing that has been a problem of this visit is this rage right now. other than that it's been amazing. so if you don't want to come and visit any more, that's fine, but i won't let you use this stupid excuse to say you're not wanted or appreciated. it's not true. it's been a beautiful visit but what you decide to do is your choice.

and what happened next is why i am not afraid of anger:

robbed of his flawed thinking, he could finally admit what was underneath it. because there is always something underneath it: a truth not consciously felt or acknowledged or spoken. some thing swallowed hard and kept in, bursting under the pressure of too much or not enough.

after he admitted what he actually was responding to, together we held that truth between us, the truth of his real fears. and the anger, just a moment ago comprising and threatening our entire universe, suddenly changed. it became a gift – the vehicle in which the truth could no longer be ignored. the way in which it needed to be born out.

and, as you know, truth is all i ever need. all i ever want. it is the unavoidable through line that connects everything. a path so visceral that it resonates everything. its heart is beauty. its soul is love. and i am grateful for everyone who gifts truth into my life, both the give and the take. even at the small price of anger and doing and saying things we don't mean. as long as we're willing to stick through to the other side, it was worth it. our journey was worth it. and the Truth will always be worth it.

the journey

the journey ~ mary oliver 

one day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-----
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"mend my life!"
each voice cried.
but you didn't stop.
you knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations ----
though their melancholy
was terrible.
it was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do----
determined to save
the only life you could save.