Into the Wind

Today the wind blew so hard that I had to lean forward to keep walking along the shore. There were huge white caps and the surface of the water responded to the wind like an animal raising its hackles- dark fur bristling. A friend of mine saw a whale breach out there just this week. I've never seen one but I live in hope.

Down at the creek the path is littered with tree tops from the cottonwoods and it smells like ganj. I don't mind: sometimes that is good medicine. There are so many branch tips on the path that I imagine that the tops of the trees have been blown smooth and I remember an article that my friend Lisa sent me about how this time, this now is like those rock tumblers that polish precious stones…that we are all having all of our rough edges tumbled off. I think about this. I hesitate. I like silver linings. It does feel like that. And also much worse 

 Also I missed my sweetheart today. We have this new schedule challenge and missing him hit me in the chest like a wood plank. It bent me over at the kitchen table. Brought me to tears. OK maybe that's because I was also doing my taxes…but that's the thing: it's everything, isn't it? Right now, it’s everything: the broken trees, the pushing wind, the deadly news, the jeering tweets, the dead bodies, hate and the rage and the lack of breaching whales.

Bright side: I get my son back today and I have missed him so much that my lips crumple just thinking about it. Underbelly: that means I won't have alone time with my sweetheart for two weeks, and I am lonely and brokenhearted just thinking about it. 

Sunshine stands at the edge of the bank looking at me: "Aren't we going down to the creek?" He notices when we don't greet the elements, I swear it. So I walk down to the sandbar that is new since last winter’s rains changed the shape of the shore... I remember how I felt last November, which is the rainiest month of the year, and I face east and I try to think of something to be grateful for and all I can think of is just the air that I breathe and the fact that words can express love as well as hate and the wind hits the treetops above me, sudden and loud and I am thankful for poetry and I am thankful for the impact of the truth tellers. 

I face south and I try to think of something to thank fire for and I am thankful for motherhood which is the fiercest thing I have ever known and which will never let me give up. 

I face west and try to think of something to thank water for, and I am sobbing now and that is a relief and I am thankful that I can feel how hard this all is. Numbness is so much worse. 

And then I face north. The Alder branches stir. The chandeliers of maple seeds are hanging. I am thankful for the silence that is ahead. I am thankful for the chance to reshape things that winter brings.

Ancestor Assignment

 I am sitting by the lake at British Columbia witch camp watching spotted dragonflies do an aerial tango over the water. Their wings are black-and-white and they move  better than dancers, predatory and free and beautiful. This is the second day at camp. It's hot this year, so everyone is in the cold deep waters of the lake. I am under an alder on a grassy bank, alone. I have been with people for what feels like 36 consecutive hours and I've become full.

I get full. And it's also true that one of the things that I love about witch camp is the many ways that I get full - of love, of laughing, of  magic and spell craft-and the many ways that I see my empty spaces, which out there in  my regular life can be clouded by Netflix and red wine and a different kind of time. 

On the first night of camp- which was both two nights  ago and also at least two years ago- one of the teachers said that when we come to the table of spiritual sharing, we need to come with a full plate, not be so hungry that we are feed blindly from cultures that are not ours Three years ago another friend said that one of the things that is so painful for white people is that we have been severed from our spiritual roots, from the spiritual traditions that arose out of our ancestors' relationships to the land... before the Saxon or Roman or British or any one of the rest of the fucking empires which used war to replace local spirituality with the political tool that is "organized religion."

I remember sitting in the hall when he said that, and feeling that reverberate through me to the core. That severed feeling, and the grief of it.

I'm feeling that now.

The dragonflies have been joined by damselflies which are small and periwinkle blue. I'm feeling that now because this week's camp intention is to work with the ancestors to.. wait, let me look it up. It's wordy but beautiful:

"In slow time and deep earth, we dance with ancestors near and far as we learn to decolonize and reweave cultures of compassion and justice."

We don't know how to do this though. 

A fish just leaped out of the blue-sky-reflecting water. It's the middle of the day. I am out of time's grip. Nothing is urgent and everything is precious.

We don't know how to do this, so we are calling on our ancestors, and I realize that I know very little about mine. 

Ripe

 I can smell the blackberries, they are ripe. I can't see them but the sweet purple is all through the air by the creek, the smell of the beginning of the end of summer. I am happier than I have been in years. 

Not moment to moment... I've had many moments of great happiness in past few years. I'm talking about the sine wave of my...  Contentment? No. Calm? No. It's something deeper than that and I would call it Faith if that word didn't smack of fundamentalism in these strange days. Whatever it is, it is the same thing that ripens the blackberries  The unswerving knowing of one thing following another in a seasonal cycle that holds both logic and magic. That makes a whole. I have actually been building my life like that. 

The Order that Holds the Moon

Yesterday morning I woke up and I was like What happened? Why does it feel like I'm five years old and it's Christmas? And then I remembered. The night before, Cary Moon came in second in the Seattle mayoral primary and I love her, and not just because the first Seattle female mayor in 91 years is going to be called "Mayor Moon", (happy dance!!) but because she has actual ideas for making things better, instead of just describing the problem. Gods, I am so tired of hearing the problem described in more and more shocking/witty/entertaining ways. I am not entertained by the problem.  Cary Moon says "It's not OK to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative in this town anymore." She sees a way to not follow the path of San Francisco, and so many other cities that are so rich and so poor and drowning in the divide. She sees a way for Seattle to be a beacon of light when we need one in this country. And to reflect our goodness, because we are good.  

Mayor Moon.

I felt that way most of yesterday.

But today I feel so sad, and I don't know why.  It might be because I had my parent date with my son last night. We went to our usual D&D game, but he didn't want to play, and I miss him because he's been at his dad's for a week and a half, and he's nine going on 16. So cool and aloof and grown up all of a sudden and how did this happen? I just feel loss.  And there's the smoke: the sunset last night and sunrise this morning, tangerine in a violet halo, the air filled with ashes from the fires up North. 

I am sad and I don't know why. 

So, down by the creek this morning, I give myself time to feel what this is, and not know, and keep trying to feel it. The water in the pool below the waterfall is hazy also, maybe with ash or maybe with the pure excess that is pouring out of the Birch trees as their catkins open and release the seeds into the dying summer. Sometimes, It's so hard to not to know what is going to happen and keep trying. But they do. 

Certain things help. Seeing each other helps. Yesterday afternoon I went to a peace circle that one of my clients was hosting, almost 40 people opening their hearts in order to be better to each other, even though it's so scary to feel.  They said so, that it was scary, and then told their stories anyway and I was filled with this rising feeling of love and something like confidence, not in myself but in them.

We closed the circle by naming what gift we each bring, and I thought about mine: an open heart? Vulnerability? Storytelling? None of them seemed right and the talking piece was getting closer and closer and I didn’t want to think about what I was going to say, I wanted to listen. So I let it go, decided to let it just happen it and then the green, heart-shaped rock was in my hand I said that my gift is that I believe things will get better. I believe, even when it seems so impossible, the challenge so daunting.

And I do, even now, here, where the smoke clouds the water. I'm crying and I'm not sure why, and my heart feels like it's breaking and I'm not sure why, and the magnificent catastrophe burns on the news. Somehow I know that the same cycle that is taking my son slowly away from me and into the orbit of his own life, it also brings the moon full every month and lifts the seeds from the birches every July and calls us to risk caring for each other. It is in us, this preference for life. And I am still sad and I still don’t know why but the weight of it is easier to carry and I rise and walk up the creek bank.

More Pink

Tonight I ran into an old friend and confessed to her that I haven’t been writing because my kind of writing – memoirish—seems so insignificant in the face of the maginificent catastrophe we are facing.

This is, of course, the voice of the oppressor in my head. My internal critic. I have named her Edith, for the sake of recognition. This has helped.

Tonight, before that, I walked down to the creek, and the ground in the meadow was bone dry, a hard brown scape with tufts of pale beige grass. Thirsty ground. It is so hard to feel nothing for a long long time.

It seems like that’s what’s asked, now. To feel it all, or feel nothing. The one, impossible. The other, a killing lack.

When I saw that old friend, she said that she reads this. When I confessed this fear that what I have to say is too small, she said no, it reflects what I feel, what I don’t say. She said it helps.

She also said “I haven’t known what happened since you knocked on your boyfriend’s door. I was like… she put herself out there, did they get back together? Didn’t they?”

But by that point in the evening, by the time I had worked up the will to ask her—well, the tarot cards were out and the bartender had invented a drink for our other friend, and it was hot pink, which is my new favorite color. (I want EVERTHING to be pink. Every morning, when I wake up, I make my coffee and I get on Craigslist and I type in “pink.” Just to see.)

Anyway, by that point in the evening, we were all a couple of pink drinks in and also my sweetheart had called and I had put him on speaker so that Nash could tease him, which she loves to do, and my other friend said, “but I figured you are together, since he called…”

Yes. And it’s important to be passionate about something other than that man. (Though, I still am. About him.)

But I am also passionate about freeing women’s voices. The painful and widening relief for us of speaking. The relief for men of not having to... The settling by all of us into the easy give and take that could happen if women were just a little more high voltage. 

 A little more hot pink.  

It’s funny how I can be passionate about the importance of unsilencing other people and not be writing because Edith says I have to hold forth on the 25th amendment or shut the fuck up.

This is not true. This is the whole point. It’s all needed now. This is what we have, when the antics of the magnificent catastrophe try to erase us. We have the whole self, the whole of humanity, the whole of the earth, parched and soaking, in all her seasons, still breathing, still speaking for life.

A hot July moment

I lay at the top of the field and observe the layers in the meadow: first, the smell of the clover, then the sweet buzz of honeybees. They fly under the summer wind, which is the next layer. It carries the small things: a gnat, a butterfly,  perhaps a lacewing... there are enough grass daisies here. And above these the dragonflies, arial wolves that they are. They are huge and they weave a glittering grid over the field. They are predacious and lustful because it is July. 

Above the dragonflies, the violet tree swallows. Their pattern is larger- giant, graceful swoops of their sharp wings, their trailing forked tails. They write in cursive. And then, above the swallows, so high, a single Osprey wobbles into view. It is joined by two, steadier ones. They are a family, the parents leading and following and flying their own patterns as the year progresses. My son is away from me for two weeks while he visits family with his dad in Minnesota.  There is freedom in this, and aching grief too. Down at the bottom of the meadow, a maple leaf falls. This moment, high summer: Slow, empty, full. Over in a heartbeat. 

I Wonder What's Up There?

Down at the creek, there is some sweet flower, but I can't see it. Maybe it's in the treetops, that's where the action is in the forest. When I think about this I always remember the scene in the hobbit when Bilbo climbs out of Mirkwood,  climbs to the top of a tree and sees the sun for the first time in weeks and the whole canopy of the forest is covered with beautiful spooky purple-black butterflies. Who knows what is going on up there? As I walk along the creek I come to a thick broken vine that is hanging out of an Alder tree like a fireman’s pole going to nowhere. 

I am thinking about uncertainty now.

That's what I'm teaching tomorrow, and the day after that.  In some ways, it feels like what I'm living every day: this presidency. This falling apart time of our world. This excruciating sensation of not knowing how it gets better.

The class I'm teaching is following the hero’s journey,  Joseph Campbell's description of the basic structure of story across cultures and over time. I'm combining it with what I know about myth, and magic, and the way humans need to see each other and be seen. I am both making it up as I go and not making it up as I go. I've been here before. I've never been here in my life.

But here, this place in my life right now, it's pretty sweet.  It might be true that I am in the return part of the journey. It might be true that facing my terror of having no money and losing my house in order to change my life and career was the ordeal, the turning point at the heart of the journey. It might be true that coming out of the broom closet, and being a whole person in my work was that. These things might be true… and I might be fooling myself that I am returning, That the descent is over and I’m on my way home. I have done that before too. Maybe these are the tests and the gifts that prepare me for something else, something deeper.

Who knows?

I know that it never ends, anyway. And I know a little bit about how I survive uncertainty: I write, I sweat, I drink a lot of water, I receive support. I plant seeds in early summer as I did today: sweet peas and sunflowers, cosmos and nasturtiums. I cut the roses and the mock orange and I bring them indoors because I know that beauty is one of my best tools against despair. And I write, and I sweat, and I drink water, and I receive support.  I go to the creek where I can touch the wild. I go to work and I try to feel the presence of it in the room and I open the door, say come in, say there are gifts here, this is our best friend in uncertainty. 

Faith in Cherries

Tonight I ate cherries out of a green bowl and drank a tiny tiny stemmed glass of elderflower liquor and danced in my almost empty living room. I have emptied it of old furniture and it is like a ballroom now: hardwood floors, white curtains, empty save for a few things. In the corner, there is green velvet chair and a teak stool with three white candles. I lit the candles. Next to the long wall, my paints are spread out on a small round table next to my easel. There is a black and white watercolor of a tree. It is not finished. This, it turns out, is my altar to Brigid. The mantle covered with round rocks and ferns and green seedheads belongs to Rhiannon. The liquor cabinet with a vase of fragrant white mock orange branches belongs to Freya. She likes that.

I’m not Christian anymore, not since I was 16 and learned that sex was a sin. My teenage bullshit meter went off immediately and I never looked back. So,  being person of spiritual leaning, I have found these, the gods of my ancestors. Well, not Freya. She sneaked in. Maybe through the front door actually, being the goddess of pleasure that she is. But Brigid and Rhiannon are  the ancient goddesses of the British Isles, born of the land and language and people long before the Roman empire planted it’s bloody Christian flag in the British Isles. But that’s not what this is about. This is about dancing, in an almost empty ballroom and remembering that I love to sing when I cast the circle and invited in Freya for pleasure and Rhiannon for will and Brigid for art...

But Rhiannon really wanted singing, not just the green will of the land to grow, but the song of it. Summer is here. Have you had cherries lately? They are a sweet song. So I took one of the globe-shaped allium seedheads out of the glass on Rhiannon’s mantle and made it a microphone. And sang and sang and danced and sang. Witchy Woman! Faith, Faith, Faith!  I danced and belted it out and my voice cracked on the howls and my dog howled with me  I remembered and sang to them, to pleasure and will and art and PLEASURE and WILL And ART and SONG.

When myroommate came home I was just starting my third rendition of Faith. Three times is a spell. “Well I guess it would be nice, if you would touch my body, I know not everybody, has got a body like you..” (Freya likes that) 

I kept dancing, singing into the seedhead as my roomie walked through the front door. They said they could feel the magic from outside the house. And that the almost empty living room, wasn’t empty at all. It was thick with magic. I can still feel it now. Have you had a cherry lately?

Washing Shiny Things

Monday, I saw a Western Tanager, which is the Lady Gaga of songbirds. So showy- yellow and crimson and black and big, like a parrot. I feel like its that big! Plus, I’ve only only ever seen them in May, and only in some years. The year I changed my name, the year I had my son, this year.

What’s going to happen this year?

Monday, when I started writing this, I was at the end of my twice monthly 48 hour marathon with my lover, the non-parenting weekends we get to have together. These weekends leave me exhausted, happy, lonely for him, lonely for time by myself. If I’m lucky, I have a slow Monday, and can right my insides by righting my outsides- sweep every inch of the house, fold laundry, Netflix, cooking… And all the while, I’m like a raccoon with shiny objects, flashback memories of the weekend. I am washing these memories in the stream of my mind over and over- the conversation about parenting on Friday night, the impromptu dance party for two in my living room after. Looking at a David Hockney in a gallery on Saturday, and laughing so hard while watching the movie about Howard Stern on Saturday night that I started making those hissing Scooby Doo sounds and couldn’t stop. The mind-blowing sex. Seriously. (Man, it’s hard to write that. Even though I’ve done it before. Why? I know that the Madonna/whore thing is a cage meant to silence that power and that life force that comes from pleasure. I know that. I can’t do my work without access to pleasure. And yet, I have a life that requires me to be a “respected professional woman.” Fuck. Yes, fuck.)

Anyway. All that happens. Plus the talk about faith, and where we are, which is honest and a little hard and honest. I take that one out and wash it a few times, set it next to the dancing and the laughing and the loving and look at what is. This is what is, now. It is real and I have come to value what is more than what isn’t.

Covered in Now

When you know a place, spring is like a reunion. The wild roses are back, the thimbleberries, the lacy vine maple.  They are back after the long dark days of winter. We had a record rainfall in Seattle, 45 inches from October to April. Long. Dark. So seeing the pink of the Salmonberry flowers – so bright you can almost hear them calling to the hummingbirds “Come here now!" – the color buzzes through me: a spring riot, the third hour of a really good party third, foreplay... it is the beginning, it is the swell before the fall.

Near the little waterfall there are three very old apple trees in the middle of the wood. They have grown tall and narrow amongst the native maples, so narrow and tall that I didn't see their blossoms all these years, never recognized them as the remnant of some long ago orchard until now, as I stand balanced on a log in the middle of the rushing creek, trying to not to fall over as I look up to see where the drift of white petals is coming from. 

These, in May, are as good as snow in December.

Now, now. Now.  

I face East and call in the breath, the words, the ideas that my world needs from me now. I face South and call in desire as a fuel. I face West and call in what my feelings know. I face North and say “Let me make this with my body, with my hands.” I balance. I feel center, the mixing place. At this moment a breeze rises and stirs the tops of the apples trees and a a funnel cloud of petals forms around me, white circles spinning in spirals and slow turns before the sea of spring green, rushing around me, rushing below me, as spring’s record rain covers me in now.

Devastated and Grateful

I’ve been feeling like such a badass at work lately.

Helping! Connecting! Breakthroughs! I’m a badass!

Today was not that. Today was me going into a meeting with a colleague and our clients and expecting a really great outcome and it not going the way we wanted to at all and afterward me swinging wildly between What did I do wrong?!?  AndIt’s okay, you can’t control everything. And What did I do wrong?!?

Like that.

That swinging wildly thing though. That’s what I resolved that I wanted a better handle on since the incident. (You know. The Incident.) I decided that instead of being prey to my fears, I would rewire my brain to know my own ground, to have a still place where I rest. Where there is more clarity and less swinging.  I decided to do a gratitude meditation series.  Starting NOW! Ten days in a row! Boom baby!

Day one was gratitude for one aspect of the city I live in. (I picked the trees)

Day two was gratitude for one aspect of my home. (I picked my butter yellow, garden viewing living room.)

Then job. Finances. Childhood. You know. Easy stuff like that.

For some reason I took a couple days off.

But today, I had an hour to kill before I had to pick up my son and I really wanted to go into that bar nearby where the bartender with the cute dreds gives me a porter without me even asking, which makes me feel all welcome and important.. I wanted to go in there and have a pint and think about What did I do wrong? And It’s okay...  And…

Instead I got into my car and listened to Day 8 of the Gratitude Series. I am partly telling you this because I want you to be impressed with me and how healthy and what a paragon of virtue I am. Look at my shit.

But mostly it’s because of what happened next: Day 8 was gratitude for your family day. Pick one person. So I picked my son. Pick one thing about him. So I picked one of his superpowers- he is so deep and so insightful and also has a way with words. He says things that just pierce me to the core. I am amazed that I get to know him and hear him forming his world, himself. So, I sat there in my car and watched my breath and felt grateful for his insights and imagination and ability to say shit. Then I took a little car nap. (That is one of my superpowers. I can power nap almost anywhere.)

Then I called my sweetheart and told him a little about my hard day and he said the exact right thing that balanced knowing me and saying wise things and making me feel like I’m loved in spite of not getting it perfect every time.

Then I went and got my son and we drove to the burrito place we like and as I parked the car he said “Mom, you know what day it is?”

“Um. Monday?” I said.

“No.”

“What day is it?” I said.

“It’s Mom-is-awesome-day,” he said.

“Aw. Thank you honey. That is so sweet.”

“Nah,” he said. “That’s just me being me.

Uh-huh.

And then, after the burrito, as we were driving away, “Mom, I have a song I want to share with you. Its about a kid who needs a friend and also about a popular kid who is dating a girl. At the same time.”

“Okay, wow.”

“He is singing it to the mom of the girl he is dating. The girl’s name is Deva.”

“Okay. Got it”

“It goes like this: Your Deva’s dating meeee..”  He warbles it twice.

“Do you get it,” he asks? “It also means You’re devas-tating me.”

Fuck. He is nine.

What have I done wrong?...  I can’t control everything. I have a car filled with this boy and the smell of a great burrito being mowed down between lyrics and I have totally forgotten my woes in the rush of gratitude. When we get home, the cherry blossoms have covered the path to my front door with petals.

Called Out There

I forget sometimes to go outside at night.

“At night.” What a strange phrase that is, but true. Night is a different place. And I can go weeks without being there- maybe I walk from my car to the front door, or the restaurant.

But I don’t go there. Smell it. Night smells different, rocky and deep. I can especially smell it when I go out on my back deck- the harbor is below me, but there are trees all around. Some of them I planted, some of them I fought for and they exhale into the night air with more freedom, more dream, than they do in the daytime. You can smell it, especially from my deck, and the bangs and train sounds from the harbor don’t matter at all. The moon does. The clouds’ drift does, white against blackest blue.

There are animals out there. I know because it was the raccoons who got me back out here in the first place. They have been knocking down my hummingbird feeder and drinking from it at night. I saw it before dawn, a coon on his hind legs, paws grabbing the feeder, belly pale, mask dark. When I turned on the kitchen light he didn’t give a fuck. Sugar, man. Liquid sugar.

The next day the feeder was askew and empty in the morning. I refilled it.

The next night I was awoken by the sound of the dog door being nosed, in and out. In and out.

Tonight I brought the hummingbird feeder in before bed, and locked the dog door. And I stood on the deck and thought: Night smells different. Wetter, thicker, wilder than day.  It is good to go out into the night and notice. It is good to be called, by small and large dangers, out of the kitchen and into the gorgeous night.

Holding

Here’s what I’m holding now:

The moment when, that night in his house after he opened his door, and after he told me how it felt for him, after he said all the ways that I hurt him when I did that and I listened and nodded  and stayed open – after all that… I’m holding the moment when we started to talk about what should happen next, and I said “I guess when I’m feeling disconnected from you, I need to figure out how to not be so reactive.” And he leaned toward me and said “No. When you are feeling disconnected from me, you need to tell me.” “Oh. Right,” I said. This is my work. To say what I need, instead of swallow it until I can’t stand it and then leave. To speak up instead of break up, even here, in love, where I am most likely to be afraid… I am holding the moment he said “Tell me.” And remembering that one of the reasons I love this man is his wise heart.

I’m holding the moment, the next day – after I had come back home and after we had agreed to try and had kissed again in a way that felt to me like it was (forgive me for how sappy this is but) my heart entwining with his, not just lips, not just tongues. I went home and I hoped it was true. That we would be able to get past this… I thought it was true. Because in the morning, after we woke up the way that we almost always do, which is a very good way to wake up, he told me things he hadn’t before, and sang with his gorgeous voice the way he had so many times before, plus put on his Patriots hat and drove to the grocery store to get hazelnut half and half for my coffee. Before having his! Which you don’t do if you are just pretending to forgive someone and don’t really care about what makes them happy, right? Right?

I am holding the moment after all that, when my wonderful witchy friend Kimberly showed up at my house with a bag of soil, a bag of seeds and magic in her heart. By that time, the fear had begun to creep in again. He had decided to take a little more time for himself. He wasn’t coming over that night. Which was fine. It was fine! I was resolved to be calm. Sanguine even. I love that word so much. From Latin for blood. I was blooded. Like a warrior who doesn’t get scared easily. I’m not scared of a little space. Space is good! I’m the queen of space. True! Also true that I was afraidafraidafraid. The missing limb feeling was going away. But was it real? Uncertainty is so hard. So, I cleaned the house. I saged the shit out of it. And when noticed that fear was telling stories and singing nasty little inquisition hymns in my heart, I drowned it out with feminist anthems and love ballads but really, it was starting to get a little loud in there and then in comes Kimberly. Kimberly! A hail of trumpets and rainbows! I swear the sun actually broke though the clouds and shone down on her. It lit up her huge smile and the cherry trees and especially Mabel the Ruby Magnolia, which I named after my rebel Great Aunt Mabel and which is so gloriously, labias-ly (yes, that’s a word now) pink that passers-by stop in their tracks to stare. Kimberly took one look at me and said “You need a reset. I have a spell.”

It had come to her while she was running in the Arboretum. We were, she informed me, going to invoke the energy of spring: Clear, Bright, Open and Strong. The pieces came to her while she ran, one by one, from Spring itself and it tracked with the elements: Air, Fire, Water, Earth. Clear! Bright! Open! Strong! And we were going to lay that spell on the Butterfly-attracting seeds in her packet and plant them in the dirt and plant them in our lives. And I said that maybe there was one more thing that might be part of the spell- for the fifth element, spirit… and we started mixing the seeds and I remembered that one ritual when we were working with the myth of Baba Yaga, and we were asking people to mix seeds and our intentions were so good but it went horribly, horribly sideways and the people were rioting and not behaving at all, plus my tu-tu almost caught on fire and I panicked and fucked up and then was saved by I remembering what I loved. (You might have been there. If you weren't there, that is a story for another time. I promise)

I looked at Kimberly and said “I think that the fifth thing might be Love.”

And she looked at me and said “Clear, Bright, Open, Strong Love.”

“Yes,” we said. And we did. We got way witchy and stood in my front yard, with the sun filtering through the cedar tree and the marsh marigolds beaming their gold faces from the pond’s edge and the seeds in a pie tin, moistened with rainwater. We held the pie tin together, heads bent, stirring together with our fingers and chanting clear, bright, open, strong, love… calling it all in until the swirl was so fertile that we could feel it and then we planted them and after she left, I drew the spell on the chalkboard oak tree that I have muraled on my kitchen wall, too. It felt so good! Look:

I am holding all of that and I am holding the moment after that, when I was alone again. Kimberly gone, the last tendrils of magic fading. Alone, but not so scared this time. Filled with faith in love. I sent a thread out to him, and a whisper: “I love you, dear. I want a clear, bright, open, strong love with you. If you want a clear, bright, open and strong love with me, I am here. If you don’t, I release you. But if you do, I am here.”

Then I sent him that picture of the mural. Because even though I meant that about releasing him, still: Hearts entwining. Hazelnut half and half! “Tell me.”

I am holding all of that. You know? 

Away from Fear

I’m getting messy again.

Last year was so hard. I was coming back from a back injury and the financial hit of not working shook my sense of security pretty deeply. And I was reinventing myself, again. And it was awesome. Awesome! I can’t believe the life I get to live now…

But fuck I was in terror a lot of the time. And I got kind of used to keeping things neat. SO neat. Sun, Mars and Mercury in Virgo neat. If you don’t speak astrology, just know that Virgos are renowned for being the most retentive, perfectionist assholes in the wheel. That’s not how we would say it, of course. What we would say is “It’s a rough job, but someone has to be in charge of quality control.” And we would be right. And also, at times, assholes. So take all of that and add a financial crisis and a tiny bit of performance pressure and multiply it by three planets and you can see how I got a little more locked down last year than in any other ordinary year.

Thank the goddess for myth and painting and fashion and marijuana (as long as I’m telling the truth now) and Sunshine the dog and my sweetheart and the seasonal glory of Longfellow Creek. All of which helped me rock last year while also running all the fucking trains.

And also that man. Who was there through that year. Who I just broke up with.

All of this I occurs to me on Friday night. I’m sitting across from my beloved best friend of more than 25 years, who has answered my 911 call to combine a debrief of my total emotional turmoil with a check for head lice, which is seldom featured in the joys of parenthood section of the catalogue.

All clear on the louse front, btw. So, our evening being cleared of a session with Ridd, we go for sushi and I tell her all about the break-up and the missing limb feeling that was not going away and how I want to try and get my need met without taking my ball and going home and how I’m not sure if there’s even still a chance because he has stopped responding to my texts.

I am only crying in the middle of my favorite sushi restaurant a tiny bit.

At least I’m also drinking sake. And eating a seared albacore nigiri with garlic sauce that is, in my opinion, the finest piece of sushi in Seattle. I know. Big talk. But you go to Mashiko in West Seattle and try it and then talk to me.

Our waiter Steve, who has become a friend over the years, comes by with the red violin roll, ahi tuna with cilantro and red chilis and something green. Can’t remember now. Possibly because Steve takes one look at my face and says, “Keep the sake coming?” And he does

Tracy says, “Why does this break up feel different? What is it that matters? Is it who he is? Or how you are with him?”

I think about it. It’s not simple. “It’s both,” I say. “Who he is, is part of who I am with him… I don’t know what happened. We used to be able to do this.” I take a sip of sake. We were drinking nigori- opaque and pearly in the bowl shaped glass. It is like drinking from a crystal ball. “We worked it out, early on. I would say to him, ‘I’m going to say something vulnerable now.’ And he would turn and look at me, and sort of settle his shoulders and say “Oh. Thank you! Okay. I’m ready.”

And I would tell him what was happening. And he was there. Every time. But... I stopped doing that. Maybe six months ago? I stopped saying that. About the same time I stopped writing

Yeah. Maybe about then.

Why do we forget the sweet things, the things that are so easy at the start? Why did I stop taking risks? To speak, to try... I did. And the sweet feeling got a little bit less. And I took less risk…Did he also? Maybe. Hard to say when fear is deciding.

That’s what dying looks like. Neat maybe. But quality? No way.

I take another sip of sake. I am forming a plan. It might be a terrible plan, though. It’s not neat. I won’t look good. I’ll probably look terrible: wild-eyed and fearful, worried. Insecure.

Plus, I haven’t showered or put on makeup in days.

I don’t care. “You know Trace, I’ve been so careful for so long. I’ve been so fearful and so focused, but I’m tired of letting fear decide. I think it’s time for me to get messy with my life again.” I look at her. “I’m going over there.”

Tracy nods and downs her drink. She takes me home and keeps me company while I pack, which isn’t much: some clean underwear in case I stay and the shaving cream and Tums he has been keeping at my house in case he tells me it really is over.

I drive to the ferry and wait, looking out over the sound. I stay in my car as the boat carries me over the dark waters and I am willing to be hurt. I am willing to not be in charge. I am willing to try and fail, because I can stand it now. I can.

I drive down the roads to where he lives. I park and get out and start up the path to his door at which point it occurs to me for the first time, What if he isn’t home?

“I’ll wait,” I think. 

Then, What if he isn’t alone?

I don’t care. Riskier to let fear decide.

He lives in a townhouse facing a huge courtyard that will one day be filled with mature trees- sixty-foot Pacific Dogwoods and Red Alders shading ferns and salal and snowberry. But for now, the trees are young, just over a year in the ground. It is dark, they are thin in the low light. Some died over the winter. Some are showing new leaves.

His porch is the third to last on the right.

Is there a light on? No. Not upstairs in his room. Not the kitchen light in the fron

Shootshootshoot.

But as I get closer, I can see a faint gold wash coming out of the door and as I turn onto his porch, I see him on his couch, in profile. This man. He is playing a video game.

I knock.

He turns his head, looks for a moment before he sees me. He rises and walks toward me, smiling a sideways smile but also shaking his head slightly.

I take a deep breath. This is messy, but it’s real.

He opens the door.

Fanged and Wrong

I hate being wrong.

Wednesday was easily in the top ten worst days of my life. Up there with the day I had Norovirus in a British Columbia YMCA bunk bed, the day I broke my femur and the day after I drank shots of tequila all night in Nogales, Mexico. A lot of shots.

It was confusing. I’ve broken up before. Why this sucking hole of loss?

I managed. I showed up for a couple of client calls. I was DM at the weekly D&D game. Not well – I actually forgot the name of the evil sorceress who is in charge of the Cult of the Dragon. But you have to forgive the small things in such times.

Speaking of forgiveness. I was wrong.

All day, I could feel it. Not just when I woke up and didn’t know where I was, but as I walked along the water and as I talked to my beloved friends, who called and sent me poems and invited me to come to the farm, come drink wine, come read stories out loud in bad, bad accents...

I felt sad and lost and also wrong.

Okay. To be fair, I wasn’t wrong about what I need. About what’s okay and not okay. Not about that. But I was very wrong one of the ways that really, really, matters.

I didn’t ask for it before I broke up. I think this is why the sucking hole of loss. Because not only is that everything I believe in, its also what was more extraordinary about this relationship than any other. I could do what I believe is the job of courage in love, which is to say “I need this, dear.” Not in the middle of a fight. In the calm moment, later, when you can hear each other, when you can say “I need this. Can we talk about it?”

I could do that. I had done it. He had responded. And I didn’t do it this time.

I know why. I had a story. I had felt him withdrawing lately, and I had a whole story about how he was not invested anymore. Who am I kidding? That he wasn’t in love anymore.

Ouch Ouch Ouch

In which case, why would I take the risk?

This is how needs do. They are tricky. Especially when they have been ignored for a while. They don’t just walk up and announce themselves and hold your hand and tell you their name and social security number. They rush out of the dark like fanged animals. They write stories that are maybe totally untrue and get you all loaded for bear and walking into a bar where your sweetheart is innocently waiting to meet you...

Have I mentioned that I do workshops about the stories written by unmet needs? For a living?

(Actually, this is one of the things that stops me from writing. The feeling that, being a professional, I cannot fuck up like this and tell everyone about it. That I ought to know better. But my friend Horizon says that she wants teachers who are working from their own edge, who aren’t perfect, who are learning right out in front of everyone. And when she says that I realize I want that too- from my teachers, my leaders, my friends. So. Enough of that.)

Anyway, sometime knowing about the fangs and the stories and the rushing dark isn’t enough. You still fuck it up. I walked into that bar with a story I’d been writing for weeks. About how he was leaving anyway. I could feel it. And so there was no point in sitting down and opening my heart because I was sure that it was already over from his point of view, and I was helpless to get my needs met, there was nothing else I could do but leave.

I didn’t ask. I didn’t, as he has since put it to me, “Try.” Which was not faithful to what we promised each other by our time and our love and the many times I did try and he did show up.

But, it was also true that he was withdrawing. He has since told me! Because he had a need of his own that wasn’t getting met. We have this moat between his island and my peninsula and we see each other around his kids and my kid and it hits him hard. He doesn’t know if he can stand it. He loves me. He doesn’t see a fix. He’s stuck there, and has been wondering if he could go on like this. Which he hadn’t told me about either. Partly because when he tried to tell me, I kind of freaked out. But he used crazy words! Words like “I think we might not have a future.” Okay. Not those words. But kind of close enough for me to hear those words and freak out.

Sometimes, I think I am not fit for human consumption. But I also think that I am. I have skills! I often use them!

Fuck me.

I asked him to forgive me two nights ago. Not for the need I have but for not asking. For announcing that I was leaving instead of saying, in a moment of calm connection, “My dear. I love you but I need this in a relationship. I need this place between us to be sweet. Affectionate.  Safe. Like a treehouse with a “We Love Each Other Here” sign on it. No sarcasm in the treehouse.

And no breaking up either.

Yes. I do see that. I see that what I wanted and didn’t ask for in a clear and unambiguous way was for us to make love a safe place we could both count on. I see that instead, I made it less safe. I’m not sure if he’ll forgive me for that. He might not. Even if he does, we still have these other pieces to deal with and we don’t know how. We don’t. But we are talking about it. I am asking for forgiveness and still asking for my need. It is a relief to tell the truth and to be looking at it together. It is a relief to be writing about it, even though Edith is pointing out that I do workshops on communicating needs for a living. And I suck at it, clearly. And still, I believe in being transparent and not pretending to be perfect and learning from mistakes but it really sometimes feels like I should know more than this.

The Unseen Story

There’s a story happening in the tops of the trees.

I can see its script, littering the path under my feet. We are at the beginning of Act II: Already, the old bud casings have burst and dropped their golden thorn shapes. Now, suddenly, the long spirally flowering catkins are everywhere. They are over. When they were up there, beckoning, I didn’t even know about it.

I have a broken heart.

It is my own fault. I know this. I don’t know why I can’t be more of a grown-up about this, not take everything so fucking seriously.  It has ended the best relationship I’ve ever had.

Yesterday, as I drove over the four-lane bridge, the giant grey ribbon of a heron flew into the treetops with a branch in its beak. Doing the hard thing. Taking a chance. This weekend, it was happening in my front yard also – the bushtits were building their mossy purse of a nest for at least the fifth year.

And then I watched a grey squirrel hurl itself, tail flailing in wide destructive circles, right at the nest. He missed it. But for the rest of the day, I watched to see if the bushtits would return. They didn’t.

My body is buzzing, miserable, numb.

He says things. Sarcastic. They are small, but I do not experience these things as small. I know that he never means to hurt me. It doesn’t matter. I experience them as these sort of volted stabs in the heart. They make my body buzz, miserable and numb. I tell myself I am overreacting. It doesn’t change the feeling. I don’t know how to feel this close to someone and not panic at an unkind word.

So last night I hurled myself at the nest. Said goodbye. I thought that after, the feeling would get better, not worse. I have broken up before and felt saner. Sure of myself. But this morning I don’t feel better. I feel worse.

I tell this to my dear friends.

Uncle Bear says, “It’s really hard to communicate a non-negotiable.”

Luckey Bunny says, “You feel this way because you are still in love.”

(Yes. These are their real names. You can have one, too, if you dare.)

Uncle Bear says “It hard to break up when you are still in love. I know. It takes me way too fucking long to break up with people. But you have to listen to your needs, honey.”

I think about this. Is this true?  I say, “Luckey Bunny, do you think that's true? Do you think that Uncle Bear takes way too fucking long to break up with people?”

Uncle Bear guffaws. “The whole fucking universe thinks I take too long! Listen to me. This hurts. That’s all. Your heart hurts like a pig-fucker. This is the awful shit of loving someone.”

This hurts. Though dancing helped a little. Last night, when Forest got home, he requested his current favorite song: “I’m Still Standing” from the movie Sing. We bellowed the lyrics and I did the “magic knees” move and he leaned back on the couch and whaled on the air guitar. “I’m Still Standing” is in Forest’s playlist, followed by “Come Together.” But when that song came on, he asked me to play “I’m Still Standing” again and then read a comic book with him.

The dancing helps but then I go to bed. I wake and look at the lamp, I don’t know where I am. A long twilight moment where I know something is wrong but I don’t know what. Then I remember. I feel as if I am missing a body part. It's only 10:30.

This hurts. But this morning, in the front yard, the bushtits are back at the nest. Under the witch hazel, a crow sets his beak in cluster of old strawberry roots. He grasps hard with his feet and pulls, then flies up into the story that I can’t see. 

Fear and booze and Netflix and Desire

  There are days when the smell of the good earth is just better, stronger, more fertile, more nourishing. Today is one of those days. As I walk from the top of the meadow down towards the maples by the creek, the smell of wet leaves and mild winter air and moss fills me. After so many weeks of ice that the creek actually froze from shore to shore, the rain has come. Even from here, I can hear it: the rain has filled the creek.

I fell in love again last night.

I like how this seems to keep happening. We keep returning to each other, rooted and whole, even in the wake of intemperate weather. At least, I am. I actually can’t speak for him, other than to say that this morning I saw the face that first I fell in love with. I know this because I took a picture of him that morning, almost a year ago, after we’d spend half a dozen hours awake and talking and not talking, entwined in his bed. I know because I see that face from time to time, when we have put ourselves into each others’ care again, when the soup of life has released us for a time.

I may actually be relaxing and accepting this love.

As I walk down the muddy, grassy hill, the ground is so wet that it almost dissolves beneath me. Sunshine streaks down, barking. There is a family of squirrels, three at least. Squirrels are his greatest desire. It took me years to teach him not to tow me, the skier behind his speedboat, when he spotted a squirrel on our walk. These squirrels are slow or inexperienced, or just a little stupid. As I watch, two of them hesitate, then dash for a tree that is not the nearest tree. Sunshine is very close, he is a blur of gold fur and teeth. He could, for the first time, catch a squirrel. But then he slows slightly, pulls up. I realize that I’ve seen him do this before. He doesn’t know what to do when he gets close.

Sometimes I want to take this love apart and see what it’s made of.

But not last night. It helped that we had some time to miss each other – my cold, his kids. It helped more, I think, that I have been meditating and doing ritual and learning about tree biology, which is to say magic, and reading Starhawk’s new book City of Refuge, which is smart and visionary and political and hopeful and unstinting in its willingness to see the best and the worst that we humans are capable of...

All of this instead of booze and Netflix.

I feel calm inside a lot of the time, now. I am less blinded by the many fears that last year contained. This in spite of all the reasons to panic, not least of them tomorrow’s inauguration.

I am taking comfort in rain. Lately, I can see it again. Today I saw the rain drops on the green rose canes, each one a perfect reflection of the world, turned upside down. In each perfect drop, the pale sky, the spark of the sun, the dark feathers of the trees.

I am not so afraid of my desire, now.

Note on timing- I posted this on Tuesday, January 24, but I wrote it -- you can tell from the future tense reference to the inauguration -- on January 20th. I feel that blogs are supposed to be immediate, but sometimes it takes me a while to get comfy with a reveal, or to edit when I'm busy with marching and meditating. XO. 

That's a Win

Tonight I told my son he needed to try tasting either a zucchini or a bell pepper. His choice. He chose the zucchini. Chewed it.  Swallowed.

Then looked earnestly at me and said, “Mom, your excellent cooking skills don’t work on all foods.”

That’s a parenting win, my friends. 

Of Boulders and Beavers

Like meditation, this writing is also a practice.

Like meditation, this writing is also a matter of facing myself.

Yesterday I came across this blog. I came across it on the NYT app, which I mention because I think it makes me look sophisticated and special. Kinda like meditation.

(The article that caught my eye, by the way, was one of the most laugh out loud funny and hopeful things I’ve seen since the election. Why is everything is "Since the election," for me now? But it is. Speaking of which, last night, I woke up in the middle of the night worried about Russia—which is weird and unusual for me – and about that same time, Congress was voting to curtail the office of congressional ethics. I realize this is the opposite of the direction I was going, which was the funny and hopeful article. Here it is. It’s called :Hipsters Broke My Gaydar," and it contains the optimistic sentence “You’re all lesbians now, America.” Not that I don’t love my boyfriend. I do. But I’m pretty sure that if America was all Lesbians, that cheeto wouldn’t be our president and Putin wouldn’t be about to install a bat phone in the oval office. And I like to think that if forced to choose between my keeping-me-very-happy boyfriend and what’s good and right for the free world, I like to think I’d choose the world. I can’t say for sure, in the wee hours, when certain things seem more important than others, but I’d like to think so...)

Well. As I was saying.. Writing and meditation both require a certain amount of self-facing. And the blog that I found through the article was a “I’m back, sorry I’ve been away” post, of the kind that I have written after not wanting to face myself and therefore not writing for a while.

Today I posted for the first time in five weeks. Today I went down to the creek, past the frost-tipped leaves. The beavers have built their damn four feet tall now, and the seventy foot tall tree at the edge of their pond is mostly gnawed through. I can’t wait to see what they make next.

It was nice to be down there. I almost walked past my boulder, because it was really was freezing and also, facing shit. But Sunshine ran down the path toward our place and then looked back over his shoulder with big brown “C'mon baby” eyes.

I didn’t want to go down there. I’ve been away from all the stuff down there for so long. But I stood on the bank and looked and I felt something stir in me. Old magic I’ve been missing, a salmon below the surface, not a ghost but a deep winter thing. I felt it all through me, so strongly that I gasped a little. Oh.  And then Okay. I guess I’m doing this.

And I went down and sat on the boulder for ten minutes and looked into the pool. It was cold and muddy and magnificent. I faced the me and I also was cold and muddy and magnificent.

Day two.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/hipsters-broke-my-gaydar.html?_r=0 

Bathing the Cat

I meditated again a couple days ago. It was like giving a bath to a cat.

Letmeoutofhere!letmeoutofhere!letmeoutofhere! After ten minutes I was panting and bloody. On the inside at least.

I started a couple months ago. On November 24th to be exact. On that day, I decided that after a couple weeks of paralyzing anxiety over the election, the one thing that I could do – or at least the first thing – was to improve access to my own calm. I had a feeling that with the shitstorm ahead that I was going to need it.

I made it 31 days in a row! At least ten minutes. Except for that night when I drank too many margaritas and all I could manage was five...But other than that, ten minutes! Or more! I meditated on the floor of my living room, with a lit candle, or sitting on a pillow on my bed. But my favorite place to meditate was the boulder in the middle of Longfellow creek.

Now it’s too fucking cold. But that’s not why I stopped. I stopped because

On day 32, I totally forgot. Really. Not like I thought of it in the morning and then thought “No, I’ll do it later.” I never once thought of it. Until the next morning when I realized I’d broken my streak.

Fuckfuckfuck.

I haven’t been able to get back into it. I think I got two days in a row at the most in the last couple weeks.

But last night, I’d committed to doing ritual with my roommate and a friend. I was dreading it. I didn’t want to do ritual, because I didn’t want to have to be a hostess, and take care of everyone, and plan the whole fucking thing and priestess everyone else’s shit. And I didn’t want to do ritual because, like meditation, ritual requires you to face yourself and feel your feelings and slow the fuck down.

I really didn’t want to.

Letmeoutofhere!letmeoutofhere!letmeoutofhere!

Plus, both of these friends are going through stuff, each in their way, and I didn’t want to deal. I wanted to be the selfish bitch who sent them both a text that said “I’ve overplanned and I need you two to carry on without me.”

Man, I thought about writing that text. I phrased it and rephrased it. I said to myself “You know what, Self? You have a lot going on and you don’t need this. I mean, yes, one friend just had her heart broken and the other one is fighting cancer. Yes. Okay. The nice thing to do would be to show up and be a good person. But you know what Self? You don’t need that! What you need is a glass of chardonnay and an early ferry to go see your boyfriend. What you need to do is to keep drinking and fucking and not thinking about… I mean, just because they are going through stuff doesn’t mean you have to go through it! They are the ones with the problems! They can be there for each other!”

I’m not holding back, am I? Not very nice. Not very likable.

This is what I’m like sometimes.

But you know what? I think that’s okay. Because I remember that one of my heroes in this world, writer Anne Lamott, says that we should “never compare our insides to other people’s outsides.” And most of the time I manage to be like this only on the inside. Most of the time, I manage to hold myself accountable for the shit I actually say and do, not the content of my cat-in-a-bathtub-brain, which was saying all that shit because it wasn’t my friends’ stuff I was avoiding at all.

It was mine.

When I thought “They are going through some stuff, and I need to take care of me,” what I actually meant was “I am going through some stuff. And I’ll do almost anything to not feel it.”

I discovered this when what I actually did was show up. We started by checking in. The cat sat next to me on the couch – the real one, not the wild one in my mind – and my pals started to share and we saw each other. We checked in for forty minutes, one by one. About cancer and heartbreak and fear and disconnection from self.

And then we ate some chips and dip and apples and chicken salad because we were suddenly starving.

And then we cast the circle and called in the elements with a simple song.

And then, just as my roommate had suggested, without me having to construct a big fat hairy ritual all by my poor me self, we meditated together in sacred space for ten minutes.

And it was STILL like giving a bath to a cat! As soon as I got quiet, all I could hear was “It’s the end of the holiday break! I was going to get so much more done! I was going to stop focusing on getting things done and be so zen! It’s the end of the break and I did it wrong! Letmeoutofhere!letmeoutofhere!letmeoutofhere”

But I stuck with it. Because I wasn’t alone and because I can do this. I can do magic, I can meditate, I can face myself, even though sometimes I feel like I am getting carved up by anxious kitty claws when I do. Because I need access to my own calm. And you know what? It was such a relief when I finally slowed down enough to see what was making me run around and avoid and worry. Ok, granted, it was for maybe 30 seconds out of the ten minutes. But that time was a patch of blue sky that I know now, that I remember, that is inside me and that I don’t want to let go of again.

That was day one. Today is day two. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m not going to let a wet cat scare me.

Happy New Year.