99th Problem

One of Jay-Z (now officially Jay Z)'s peeves must've been clutter. I have a solution. Put your piles of crap all in one place, to the best of your ability. Put it far from where you need to be productive or calm. I put mine on my bed. I may have to find another place to sleep, but I got more work done today than I think I might've otherwise.

My Inspirations

My teacher Dana Flynn asked us to portray what inspires us. She emphasized thinking about what inspires us today, rather than yesterday or tomorrow.

Since breath is literal inspiration, I realized that I am currently being held up and pushed forward by things having to do with the movement of air. I wrote all this down more freely than I often do, letting my thoughts motivate and my fingers follow.

*

 "Can you give me a knockout / I'll turn it inside out."
--Air Waves

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Come as you are / As you were / As I want you to be."
--Nirvana

Kickboxing. (Gineen and Vlad and Emmanuel have helped me direct my breath and movement to a more badass place than I thought possible. They've given me a place to put my anger, and reasons to see past the things I thought I couldn't do and turn them into daily habits.) I can now put my old selves and my current self toward the same brave purpose, and there I find my eternal self.

* *

"Jailhouse gets empty."
--Sublime

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
--Pablo Picasso

"I'm not afraid."
--Eminem

Forearm stand. (Because of Dana and Sheri and Mary Dana, I am flying up the wall daily, and I am awestruck at my own ability to push aside the boundaries I've built for myself. I love this feeling.) I'm more free than I thought I could be.

* * *

"Take my hand 'cause I know what you're going through / At the time I had no way of knowing"
--Cut Copy

"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
--Mary Shelley

"He walked in circles till he was crazy and he lived that way forever"
--Neko Case 

The unseen. (Ali and Emily have opened my eyes to the subtle body and its powers.) I breathe into what I don't know and can't touch, and I'm suddenly aware of the energy that pulses through me and around me, and the things I can do to direct it into different physical and mental places.

* * 

"I love you 'cause you tell me things I want to know."
--The Beatles

"Find out who you are and do it on purpose."
--Dolly Parton

"And just where you are might be the right place / might be that sweet space / you don't know." 
--Blind Pilot

And, of course, my mother, the one who gave me breath in the first place, and held me through all life's difficulties, and and taught me to think as openly as possible. She is here with me as I breathe now, tracing her finger down the bridge of my nose like she did to calm me when I was a baby. Her baby. Her breath.

*

 "And who believes that my wildest dreams and craziest schemes will come true?"
--The Turtles

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Today is the greatest day I've ever known / Can't live for tomorrow"
--Smashing Pumpkins

Living (in) Love

I'm fizzing with excitement to get to yoga today. I just know there will be miracles - maybe small ones, but significant ones. Body ones, mind ones, community ones. This journey is one I've wanted to take for a long time, and now that I am here, I can't imagine being anywhere else.

It makes me think about the action of love. How active can it get? How outreaching, how outward tending, how careful, how thoughtful? One of our teachers tells us that the hardest person to love is yourself. How does that action help you love others?

I think for me the crux is attention and trust. Love isn't never having to say you're sorry, but it's being willing to, and knowing one how that the person you hurt won't disappear. It's wanting to do your best not to hurt them again. 

Namaste.

Love

Love always wins. You can't drive it out. You can't wipe it away. You can pulverize it and it will regroup. You can tear it and scatter it and its pieces will find each other. 

You have to fight for it, and those battles take time, and they aren't completely won yet, but we will win them. Love will keep winning.

It really is all you need.

Thank you, SCOTUS majority.

On Grammar, the Uterus, and Free Will

Wendy Davis and Letticia Van der Putte are my heroines. They stood (literally) and spoke and were wholly present for a cause that should be close to the hearts of every human with free will and the desire to control their own body. Others have written far more eloquently than I on why that matters and why their fight needs to be upheld and why Texas women should not be messed with. I'm interested in my own gravitation toward the word "heroine" here. I generally support the use of non-gendered language - I wouldn't say "poetesses" - so why am I not saying "heroes"?

It probably comes down in some respects to the beauty of the word. It just looks strong. HEROINE. If you avoid thinking about the drug name contained within it, it's a pretty interesting assemblage of letters, with the O anchoring it all.

Maybe the "-ess" is problematic. What I like about heroine is that it's not as obviously derivative of hero (even though it is derivative, in point of fact). The "-ine" is less frequently used, and it shifts the word's pronuncitation, to make it a new thing. A heroine has free will. She isn't just a suffixed word. She has her own (vowel) sound.

I'm on a bus with no wifi other than on my phone, so I can't look up research on this that would bolster my flimsy argument, but I like thinking about this. If anyone knows of any citations that might be helpful, please send them my way!

Untitled

I have a recurring dream that I have lost my voice. I am sobbing for Mom, and sometimes I am screaming at someone about how unfair it is, and I can’t scream loudly enough. My voice chokes in my throat, and I scream without sound. When I wake, I don’t need much dream theory to suggest that this relates to the depth of my grief, and how it isn’t fully exorcisable, how it will always live in my chest along with my love for my mother. For the rest of my life, I will love and miss her. I will be only so happy. My happiness will always be laced with sadness - and yet I have to try to be twice as happy, for her, and for the happiness she embodied that she can no longer give to others. She gives it in memory, of course, and that is going to have to be enough - except it isn’t enough. It just is.

I hear a car on the avenue outside my window and I think it is my mother’s car pulling into the driveway of my childhood home. I think this for two full seconds, and then I remember. I travel back through grief and memory along the tow rope of the Way My Life is Now, Without Her, and I am back in Brooklyn, back in my pajamas, back writing about a mother who should be still alive but wasn’t given that chance. I should not be writing a eulogy. I should be planning to take her to Hawaii. I should be trying to convince her to visit, to hug her grandcat (a word I didn’t feel comfortable with her using until she got sick), to hug ME. I should be arguing with her over why I should take the couch and she should take my bed, with my discounted high thread count sheets. We should agree that they are not as luxurious as they should be, and we should then discuss that part of the appeal of hotels is the fact that you don’t have to do your own laundry. We should be making fun of my ex boyfriend together, and she should be meeting the dear friends of mine that she never got to meet. We should be visiting my aunt together.

I have done and will do all of these things. I have done some with her in life, and I will do all with her in death - in After Life, I guess I should say. To me, the After of her Life is togetherness with me. She is on my shoulder, in my heart, in my DNA, in my smile, in my eyes, in every breath, in every beat of my heart. I am without her, and she is within me. And it’s not enough. It just is.

Every Day Mothers' Day

This Fathers' Day (and every day), I celebrated my mom. She was a superparent. She raised me with little help, lots of love, and the kind of boundless energy and attention that I aspire to show a child someday. She made me inquisitive, brave, and sensitive. She challenged the boundaries I set for myself. She skipped down the street with me. She gave the best hugs. She listened, always. She worried about me. She reveled in my joys. She fought with steely, warm strength to stay alive, and she told me it was for me - I don't think I will ever receive a greater gift, nor be loved so hard. Her spirit sits on my shoulder, and her voice rings in my ears. I miss her with my whole self, and I am steeped in gratefulness for her love, her example, and the precious time that we had. Every new thing I do and every old thing I cherish is in her name. My Mama Nancy.

I also celebrated my auntie. She is my Mom Person now - more than an aunt. She is a best friend, a confidante, a tv watching buddy, a jokester, a good shoulder for tears, a tower of strength, a model of generosity. She has been dealt some jaggedly painful blows, two in just this year, and she honors the memory of our loved ones with her grace and generosity and bravery. I am so lucky to have her in my corner, and I will always be in hers. With my cousin and his wife, we are a little family that leaves room for the presences of our loved ones. Just try to pull us apart. You aren't strong enough. I love, you, famdamily.