Memoir. Poetry. Dreams. Stuff I don't want to forget.
"Modern psychology has done much to reveal the sources of conflict, but it has yet to discover methods of awakening inspiration or supplying the mind with something that makes life worth living. This indeed is the creative task facing the saviors of humanity." Meher Baba, circa early 1940s
It's 2016 and I'm 30 and a half. There are about a million and one wild and wacky stories that run through my veins and my mind on the daily that I think, "I had better write that down or I might just forget it once I start birthing my own babies." You know, when all the blood goes to a placenta that I'm growing which nourishes a tiny body in my body, and nothing is ever the same again. You see, not only my sun is in the sign of Cancer, but also the rising sun at my time of birth, Mercury, and Mars. Stories live in us whether we want them to or not. When I 'make right' with my stories, I feel happy. I've let this practice of writing go because of other "responsibilities." It must be resurrected.
I brought in the year by attending one of my best friend's births. That was pretty great. Sometimes I have to pinch myself and wonder, how did my life get so cool? How is it that I'm standing here right now, witnessing one of the most miraculous miracles ever (the birth of a child) and this physician just put a warm wash cloth on a woman's perineum because I kindly suggested it? What? Did I ever think this would be my life? No, not really. Although, I had a dream about birth in my college dorm room.
As a child I had a vision of what I wanted to do with my life. I was crying and felt alone. I have no recollection of why. I was on the toilet, sitting. I thought I would be really good at holding people while they cry. I thought it should be a job. Being with people and holding them when they cry. It's all the same really...
Note to any high schoolers who might be reading this: Don't burn your journals. Don't burn the love letters. Keep them in a box forever. I wrote a poem about a Hemlock tree in the 4th grade, (the one at GRP in the back field) and I would kill to have that poem back. I just know it was amazing. I'll never be able to read that poem, but I remember how it felt. Keep that shit in a box!
You never know when a woolly adelgid is going to change the story, and you'll wish you had that poem.
Highlights of the year:
On February 1st, 2015 a bobcat walked through my handsome fiance and my yard. Our "yard" is more like, the woods. We live in a timber framed cabin our landlord built off wood from the land. I was making chai when it happened. The beautiful creature locked eyes with us and moved on. She walked right by our porch. The chai was really tasty.
On August 1st, 2015 Christopher and I got married. Then we went to Costa Rica and I saw three kinds of monkeys: white-faced monkey, howler monkey and spider monkey. It rained a lot in the afternoons. We like rain.
I attended more births in one year as a doula than ever and I'm tired, but happy.
I have become known, despite my great resistance to success, for my craniosacral and massage work and my craniosacral work with infants. People have also brought their older children to me, and I love it. While I have regretted going to Goddard College on many occasions, on some days I realize that I'm living my thesis. It was titled, "Perinatal Relational Holding Environments and their Long-term Impact on Development." I'm still curious about all that. The more I know the less I feel I really know about it. I'm surprised a lot, and humbled.
Living with my beloved, Christopher, in this small cabin is challenging only in the best of ways. However, it's difficult to really even say those words because it is 10,000,000 less challenging than every other relationship I have had with men whom I have loved. In that sense, it's really a piece of cake. We both know ourselves. We're not afraid to communicate even when it's sucky and hard and vulnerable. We believe in love. It makes all the difference in the world. Plus, he makes the most perfect chicken in the entire world, and so many other things, but he can't make a good hot chocolate or cookies to save his life. (He'll really hate that I wrote this.) We balance one another, most of the time.
Many people have warned me how all your stuff comes up when you get married and how marriage is the hardest thing you'll ever do. I haven't found that to be our story. It's simpler than that. It's not complicated and heavy - although sometimes I wish he didn't complain so much. I'm sure he feels the same way about me. He's mostly like a refreshing mountain stream that is constantly running through my life. Christopher.
Most of my 20s felt like a trainwreck of rainbows, spiritual communities and soulmates gone awry, roadkill, desperation, spreadsheets and too much nutritional yeast and veganaise. I'm so happy to start a new chapter.
Two weeks ago Christopher made me part with my old futon bed that saw me through the past 8 years or so. There's nothing like marrying a dapperly dressed man from New York to make you realize what a hippie you are.
We put it on the side of the road and within minutes a man with one leg stopped, picked the thing up completely on his own (I am not exaggerating in the slightest) and threw it in the back of his SUV. He was pretty amazing. It'll be a couch in his shop.
It was a "Toubab Krewe futon." You see, it simply lived in the old Montford home (73 Cumberland, represent!) that I moved into when I was 20. Toubab lived there before us, before they got "famous." Everyone else had a bed already but I didn't, so I took the one that was left there. Prior to that I was borrowing someone else's futon. Why buy a new bed when there was a perfectly good free one that smelled ok? There were a few red wine stains that accumulated over the years amongst other things.
I would have nothing but futons in my home if left to my own devices. Christopher hates futons. I would also have nothing but hand made ceramic dish ware. He isn't too hot on that, unless it's "hip ceramics." What the hell does that mean? Please, just give me some old time Appalachian pottery and some Japanese futons and call it a day already! Done! We're compromising.
It must have been my second or third year at summer camp. Ten or maybe eleven years old. Two night camping trip. While walking towards our first camp site, our counselors took away all our watches. They spoke to us about time and the movement of the sun and moon and how people of the land used to relate to the passing of days. This reflection strikes me as particularly potent considering how few children have the experience of even being unhooked from the many devices that now accompany modern life.
So we threw our watches in a bag. What came next was even weirder. The female counselor, I believe her name was Mandy, pulled out a bag of smooth, small stones. They spoke to us about a walking meditation that was common to native peoples, in which they would put a smooth, small stone in their mouths while walking quietly and mindfully in the woods. We were not to talk. We were to do this until they told us to stop. Arriving at an area with old trees, big boulders and a fire pit, they explained that we were to continue to remain silent, find a place alone in the woods no more than two "see-fars" away and embark on a "solo sit." It was a time to quiet the mind and connect with our surroundings. You could see the looks of disgust on some of the other kids. My eyes were bright and happy.
I found a spot on a big rock and sat comfortably. The outlines of the leaves on the trees began to blur a little bit as I began to see the subtle shimmer of all the living things around me. I felt not only my mind quiet, but my body. I looked down at the patterns in the rock and was transfixed by the speckled grey, white, black, dark green images there. Before I knew what was happening, with soft vision, I could see the outlines of faces, one after the other. The images were moving before my eyes. My head felt like it was ablaze with sunlight, shooting out from every direction. I saw the strong jaw lines and sad eyes of the Cherokee who once lived on the land. I saw sharp arrows and bullets, I saw the rounded white faces of the men who snuck through those very woods, planning their attacks. The faces rapidly appeared and disappeared. Then it was over. The rock did not have a preference of who was there. I felt the sadness of the people; I felt the wisdom of the old ways. I felt surprised by the experience but not shocked. I knew there was more to life. I knew there was magic, and ways of knowing that didn't involve a classroom. I felt the pulsing bliss of being away, being alone with plants and animals, being connected to their perfection. To the perfection of something bigger than my life as an eleven year old. Bigger than parents that fight, or any of that. I was sad when I heard the owl call to gather back. It was time to talk again. It was time to return the stones in our mouths to the creek.
A week or so ago I moved my bed into a small room in my house. This opened up a medium sized room for the creation of an office and sacred space for my massage and bodywork practice, and to meet with doula clients. In my five years as a licensed therapist, I have never had a space that is solely dedicated to my practice. I have always rented someone else's space that they designed, or made do in someone else's home or my bedroom.
Intentionally creating this space in my physical home seems to have also created a sense of spaciousness in my inner world.
Upasni appeared in this room. He looked similar to how he does in this picture. Not wearing much, rock solid in his presence with a serious demeanor. He was carrying a oval shaped, with pointed ends, rock in his hands with carved out holes all through it. He had a special incense that he was burning in these holes. He said there were seventy-two, and that this number was significant. Visually it looked more like there were seven and two holes, but the details were a bit blurry. He stared at me with austere focus and requested that I receive his blessings, and that the work I do in the world be done with his blessings.
I felt simultaneously afraid, yet relieved at his presence in my room. I remembered and felt all I knew about Upasni, and his immensely potent approach to the process of awakening.
Which is: if you loose it, if you are suffering, if you are on the street and hungry: Good. The closer you then come to what is real, what is True and immortal. I felt my fear around taking the risk of potentially not 'getting' all that I 'want' in this lifetime. I felt my fear around fully committing to a spiritual path, knowing what that entails as far as ego-annihilation. Upasni looked at me through all of this, seeing through my circular thought-trains and traps. He just stood there, witnessing. I accepted him.
I slowly accepted within myself all that he archetypally represents of me, of my tendencies since childhood in this lifetime towards a sincere desire for God, for Truth, for the Love that knows no end. Upasni was inviting me to accept and dance with this. To celebrate it in the world, to come out of hiding. And in not hiding, to offer my work in this spirit, to be willing to be in authentic exchange. To hold a space, literally and figuratively, for others to begin to gradually journey inward and uncover their own Truth.
Or, perhaps it will all fall apart. Good. This is the practice. Being in the success of the moment, being in the rhythm of the world, and letting go of what that looks like or doesn't look like. From this place of Being, the only actions taken are those supported by the greater Whole.
The rest was lost somewhere in the space between Upasni's piercing eyes and mine, letting it all in.
