a response to: people who say I worry to much

for acs

to worry for her,
einstien of strings and written word,
is to fall into a groove--my addiction to
defending what I hold dear.
A high school career spent in
worry and wonder,
my stomach flips when her parents name
flashes on the caller id
hoping it isn't time yet...
it's a habit habit habit I can't break--

spent hours last night staring at
our empty phones,
the clock in my head - 12 1 2 3 - he whispers in the dark
she hasn't come back yet
what are we afraid to say?

her mother at my doorstep,
have you seen her
our worries twin in the gray morning light.
teenage frantic phone calls,
clawing myself apart with anxiety
fear of and for another's life -

mis conmigos family of soul energy
intertwined like branches and shared sweatpants
all our mugs filled with bitter coffee.
always those I turn to, those I think I can walk away from -
how far would I have to go -
the reason I no longer need Adonis,
no more honey-eyed savior-heartbreakers for me--
Only my firefly self and lightbright friends

Listen:
if you found your wolf-spined lady,
your lion-eyed summerlovergirl

woke without them

what would you do at midnight?

spent last night dreaming of
the dark rain world outside,
a night haunted by men worser for
the year's wear
our naivete
what I should've done - should have asked for numbers,
called the house,
should have given her my pepper spray -
pray and how close those words sound
both defense and plea

my fire-souled manic girl of stringed things
would you have loved yourself a little more
if I had said it sooner?

better safe than sorry darlings -
how to say or show it? I love you and
I don't think I can ever worry enough--

Paralyzing Commonsense

"The paralyzing commonsense notion that everyone,
even the most radical of the radical, plays a role in the status quo
hides the subversive possibility that all of us--even the radicals--
can refuse our roles." - rtmag

A lot of stuff that's been buzzing in my head lately in terms of society has been voiced in the issues of "Rolling Thunder". The articles are incredibly interesting, and I suggest at least downloading the PDFs of out-of-print issues, if not buying the current ones.

This "Anarchist Journal of Dangerous Living" states (in Issue 2 available on PDF) that the only way to make a difference in society is to break from it's ranks - but that's not where S/He/It has directed me. Or has it? To most of "me", it doesn't make sense to change a society from the outside. Obviously we/I cannot mentally subscribe to culture/society if we want to break free from it, but can you really affect a huge change in something you're not invested in?

It really makes me take a look at my life from the witness point of view - I recently overcame a big ol' inner crisis regarding whether to continue my college education and what to study. I suppose that's all up for debate at any time (re: financial ability) but for now I'm here at school, making the most of the system while not locking myself into it. Just reading the "mission" statement makes me take a second (third POV?) look at my Self: as a student, consumer, queer, artist, lover, yogi, and woman. In simple identity--even choosing to NOT identify--how much am I a head in the rotation?

And while anarchy may strike me as a particularly angry and destructive way of reform, aren't rage and destruction part of the balance as much as creation and love?

As always, I mentally wobble between "I have no idea; I don't know" and "I have every idea in the world, I definitely know everything I will ever need". In words I cannot form yet, I know that on some level they are the same.

photo courtesy of xXPunk_14_AngelXx's photobucket. (Hah - ironic, I know.)

autumn autumn autumn pt 6 million

Cinder and smoke
the wind curls around the trees
the juniper bends
as if it were listening

I eat wind like hot honey. My sisters are writing about their season, our season: colors turning like flames, russet, gold, a brown sweeter than any boy’s eyes… I could dance naked in falling leaves, warmed by the trees with their crinkling summer coat, burning breathing what we wrote, high on pine needles beneath my feet. Folk singer’s guitar blends into itself, the same sadness: a city Fall is only smog, fog and peacoats and romance like cigarettes. I’m longing for bonfires the way I used to long for boys, heavy drums that rattle my ribs, to let autumn winds lift my feet off the ground and the night’s breathe move me like the top of a cedar…

Cinder and smoke
you ask me to pray for rain
with ash in your mouth
you’ll ask it to burn again…

Tonight we followed the ghost drums: out the dorm window, down yellow lit walks, past the empty auditorium, doors open, curtains dark… I’ve never noticed the way it is never night here, the way streetlights show the trees: ominous, unnatural wood mountains amidst steel and concrete… The sky is a strange composite, like me, of city and wild—there may be few stars, but you can’t take away that velvet blue, a soft inviting darkness, not the shadows of the tree against the sky, or the way every sound breaks loud and drifts up only to be lost in the void. But there’s still that everpresent streetlamp or car, everything lit from below, an amber darkening…

We found the drums in a gym, along with a vocalist and small ensemble of dancers. By day I would have mistaken any of them for a half-urban punk or another indie-jock… But here they were one, something both different and deeply primal. There was a man holding a bongolike drum, and a vocalist wailing Arabic or Farsi or some other language I must learn simply because of its age… And along with them, four men: jumping, clapping, dancing, all in time, the hypnotic tattoo punctuated by ay ay ays, their movements free and synced and amazing. I’ve come a long way in my poetry, but never enough to describe music… And this: this was bonfire music, nighdark barefoot, wailing and godsex and a people and war and a fierce, fierce joy. I don’t know if it had anything to do with Ramadan, or perhaps an Indian holiday? I know that I was the only woman there, without color, and that all I wanted to do was jump out of my skin, my bones singing like antennae and cattails and violin strings, how I’ve missed drums and rhythm….

Cinder and smoke
The snake in the basement found
The juniper shade
The farmhouse is burning down

So, this is our season, sister lovers... First Virgo, the grounding and the harvest, then Libra, the balance and thanksgiving, then Scorpio, the death, the birth, the reflection we take after the ghosts drift up, trying to remember themselves. Autumn makes me sing, to fly into winterdeath like a war eagle and come out in spring: on fire, to burn and go down in flames the next time the grasses dry.

In this city I dream of a cottage in green, to make good potions and cast circles and runes, to walk the woods barefoot in love. I sleep naked to feel skin on skin, that burning. I read the Wiccan Rede 13 times just for the rhyme and ancientness of it, ask the cedar tree to remember its home and maybe give me a little taste of those mountains, there’s a bonfire burning in my heart and blood is the drum. My lover and I circle it, high on the bone beat, madly in lust with everything that’s bright; I know them from somewhere long ago and ahead… We dance around this earthen star, heady with the balance and the change, building up the flame… For when others settle down to sleep we dance, we burn with winter and awaken the fire in the pines, the heart, the pen...

photo courtesy of http://www.albertdirectory.net 2001 photo contest - "winter fire stand"
song from sam beam's/iron&wine "cinder and smoke"

Constructing the "I"

What makes you fall in love with yourself?

(This may sound like the same question, but it's not: What makes [made] you fall in love with me?)

How do you prove yourself to yourself? To others?


My answer: I don't know yet, specifically. In my own mind I am an energy, a taste, a be-ing, but I think of specific things: my poetry, the sweetness of my own skin, a desire to serve, good listening skills... it's good, but am I really in love with it?

It's ironic that when in love with another (or as "another" we can be) things to adore just bubble up, but how often do we do this for ourselves?

So what makes you unique to you, what makes sends you head over heels everytime you look in the mirror?

I have no idea how this relates to our current reading, "The Tale of Genji" by Lady Murasaki, but it was what we discussed in my humanities seminar today. Interesting as all hell.

autumn autumn autumn

Oh, this season I was born in- coming back around to help me remember because heartbreak can take so much from you." (davka)

These days I am high and beautiful and shining like topaz, hair bright as tiger's eye, soul glistening like magnetic slick-night hematite....

Samhain comes 7 days before my birthday - a week before 16 I finally let the life of Jesus slide off my shoulders and took on Their Mantle. The deepest part of me knew he had been a good man, a real person of God/s and that I wasn't doomed to hell (though I still had anxiety attacks about that fact for a few years.) Four years ago this fall I watched my own face in front of a mirror at midnight, lit only by candles, and was in love with the mysteries of Life and the Earth and my own candlebright autumnbronze self. Glowing, I spoke with my grandparents and great grandparents and the many mothers before me, asked them for guidance and blessings, and the flames guttered and danced in response. Every year, by candlelight, I draw cards or cast runes for the new year. We are so beautiful by candlelight, I thought, lit by heat that sleeps in our eyes. We glow.

I probably won't be able to do that this year, but I have finally set up an altar of sorts in front of the mirror in my room. Autumn is a nesting time for me: I long to can fruits and reap harvests and sing in the moonlight with my coven people, my urban tribe, I want to dust and sweep and pull out the down comforters... This year I am stuck in a no-open-flame dorm room. I guess I'll settle for naps in my shawl's scratchy wool, remembering the tongue of flames against my hypnotized hands and face, that heat, the ribbons of dusty smoke curling towards the rafters...

First Rains

First rains of fall are here in the South Bay! Happy new year!

The moment I noticed the rain falling I threw on the least amount of clothes possible (ie less to dry) and headed downstairs. It feels so real and right, to be soaked through and shivering along with the juniper and the pepper trees. And yeah, I’m in the middle of a city, and it’s probably acid rain, and I’m probably going to wake up tomorrow with extra eyes or toes, but it is worth it for the cleansing.

This is when the real Autumn begins. I miss the Falls of home, water running down the hills in rivulets, the culverts full and gurgling… Pulling on a yellow raincoat and too-big boots to slip and slide up the Little Hill behind the house, my hand small against the rough rusted water tank. Slopping through 2 feet of mud in the barnyard to get to whatever animals in the corral, the heady-earth scent of wet horse- and cowflesh slick against my cheek…

I grew up on a cattle ranch, where drought meant so much more than letting the front lawn go a little brown. The months leading up to the rains were full of worry, of “navy showers” and my father and grandfather checking the sunrise, the cloudfall, riding out on the quad each day to make sure the cows and calves had made it to water. Some days they brought back little black bodies of calves that laid down in the hot sun and never got up. The first rain would bring a little relief, a short coat of grass for the hills, and prayers for a wet winter.

We don’t do it for the money – my family works hard to barely break even every year … I’m not sure each family member’s individual reasons: it’s been tradition for the past hundred years, the need to be close to the land, that if we sold out our 80 acres would become a landfill and cookie-cutter houses. We’re stewards of the land and cattle, and if it means going a little thirsty, letting the lawn wither, that is fine. Putting something both higher and equal – the earth, innocent animals, the grass and the eagles—before yourself is a powerful thing.

When I’m waiting at the busstop after work soaked to the skin, or get my books wet on the way to class, I’m still going to thank the universe for this rain. Though this water may be poison or polluted, the earth is still trying to get her cycles back in order and I am so thankful for it, even as I dance between raindrops and feel my soul filling up like a crystal glass, even as my Self drinks her fill and the gutters gurgle and run overflowing…

when it rains it pours, part II

these days I smell of darkness, the dank new earth—
whiskey sweat, melted butter. sweetness left to age.
these dorm halls are caves, but why I chose this tall building

in my hotbox cell I wake moist, every time
blissful alone warmness, only my throat rasping dry—

boy leaves room as I walk by from brushing my teeth
(communal bathrooms, mock intimacy, irony trails..)
I hear his tongue on his lips, words rolled around
in his teeth, wet, skin dark for one so young.
What did she say she found here—“This place is
a suckhole for subarbia”, and I know that’s what
shycasual boy is thinking, his room across the way from mine—
my soul stretched beyond injustice this town, these kids can feel—

wait

when did I become her? the girl with hips and the mystery,
woman of closed doors and eyes that reflect the fires under our feet—
the girl
boys
want. What happened, love? Who changed?
The honeyhaired child you fell for?
Unafraid of big love and frightened of fire? Now, the opposite—
If we met again, (meet) still don’t know what I do. I imagine it
most days: you invade, dumb predetor
seeking something deeper than jaguar's teeth you wear. my tongue lashes.

Goddamit, heart says, you hurt me.
Every boy I know would be so surprised,
not at the strength,
but those passions. the way I sweat malt whiskey,
love that smell of tobacco in his t-shirt,
need to sleep and seek caves. that depth.
I’m still not sure how they’d feel
about the wounds behind it.

remove, rewind, slow motion

Poem taken down for two really good reasons:

This girl

helped to create

this mag.


It looks like good times. I'm pretty excited!


(thanks to davka for the heads up... Tomorrow I get to sit through three student assemblies and story-times, so I'm heading to bed... I haven't even started it, but I love my job. :)

Paths and Standards (whilst chanelling Pinkola Estes)

I will not brush my hair for you. I will not pull these haphazard waves into a smoothshiny sleekness, I will not put my mane under wraps. I will not press a pillow over the face of my hips and thighs so that I sway to your liking, will not take down the talk for you, will not wear heels to make my ass and back tight for you, I will not unfurrow my brow or unarrow my eyes or sheath my claws: I will not do anything that you wouldn’t do for me.

City-living is far more like a jungle than I’ve realized—I’m learning when to keep my shades on, when to look him in the eyes, when to run, to stride back…. Whether to judge a man by his gender or to trust, or to keep my head bent forward like he isn’t there. It’s like I’ve been walking this line all my life, blind, and now my eyes are open: when to turn on the impassivity, the knowledge of whom I can’t pin to the ground, that I have just as much right to be here—this dorm floor, this sidewalk, this classroom, this dark street—as you do. When to open those buffalo eyes their way, to open up enough that divine light can stretch from my eyes to theirs, like morning glory vines, the way smoke longs for the heights of the sky. When to defend and when to heal. Can you do both at once? Yes, yes, you must, something tells me. The same thing that tells me what girl has got her claws sheathed, when to go to bed, whether the shadow in my room is from moonlight or something far darker.
Something drew me to this city—instinct, my gut, my third eye seeing the poverty and injustice that lies wherever there concrete and cars outnumber life forms. The city that ties it’s Monterrey Oaks to stand upright, the city that just now finds it’s community gardens full of mercury and lead. The city that is the stage for immigrant rallies and Ginsberg and revolution…I know my calling is here, but what for, exactly? And how long? How long before my heart calls me back to the hills, to the sharpness of ground and true prairie-gold winds?
I’m not saying I don’t love it here—I’m walking my path, but I know it’s not the only path I could take. My life’s work, in my mind, was always a specific scientific computation: take path that offers maximum help to maximum people. Now, now it is more complicated: Where, exactly? Low-income housing? Veggielution? Immigrant education? Health education? Women’s rights? Advocate for battered women? I don’t know, I don’t really have a set of interests, except in the LBGT area… Social work has so many opportunities that the only way I’ll know is if I work in every one of them.

And then there are men. Oh, men, oh, boys. Boys make me forget my wild-womaness, my night-eyesight and my integrity. Boys make me want to frolic and laugh and forget, but I can’t: the lake of my soul reaches to earth’s corners, I get my fire from her roiling depths, so how can I forget her call? The boy-men here, I want them, but get to close and they scare me into running, fleeing without my claws and big-toothed-grace, tripping over roots in the night…. Alone, night, again.

But somethought bubbles up, lapping at the shore in waves: need, want, need, want, the three layers of myself: the lake, the trees, the sky. Water sinks as low as it can, as close as it can, seeps into earth like a lover; and sky, the wind of the mind flows confident as a stream, but the trees in between? My soul is in the earth and I cherish her like a lover, and my self, well, I love it too and am confident in my own being, but isn’t there something… closer? Something between self-love and earth-love? That missing piece sings in the trees a lonely song, the way redwoods do when their roots find nothing to cling to. There are only boy-men here, nothing substantive, but still my nose twitches and I find myself hunting, falling, forgetting… Cycle cycle spiral, samsara, great wheel, big red road…

My footprints sing my four directions song, my uncut mane whispers which way the wind blows, which turn is the instinct of my heart and my lust longs for her other and the horizon is but a haze, I can do nothing but follow that call…

Dream, when the day is through...

This beautiful family is what I want to dobehopeforstrivefor. I'm happy for others who experience happiness and contentment, in any way, but to me, this family is IT. I found their website through a computer programmy friend, who was really impressed/intrigued by the game Jason designed.

New favorite book: Saturday with Mez. A beautifully photographed and inclusively written board-book about breast-feeding. A non-gendered child (in the book, anyway), co-sleeping co-oping, really aware family!

This is what makes me hope for the future! (and, um, play video games.)

Their local community currency project, North County Notes

Jason's website

college=questionable health

I like widening the defintion of health--as Lewis Mendahl says, "If it works, it's good medicine."

For breakfast today: Lemon scone, banana, apple, trail mix, three pieces of fried chicken.

We'll see if I feel famished/faint as usual when I get out of class in four hours.... Speaking of class, I'm gonna be late!

"marble"

It took me a long time to fall in love with myself. It took candlelight, my first Samhain, a boy's biglittle love... Sometimes I am still enchanted by own face, still and wise as deer, and sometimes I am repulsed and I think Who is that misproportioned child? Where are the lines on my face, the scars, where is dancing swan and fierce-souled badger? Who is that child in the mirror? I suppose this is a mix of those reactions...
---

only pretty when
sitting still
bombs ticking heart unflinching
mouth still as a rose, all somber pale
skin flush and eyes sinking,
hair dark and washed gold with wanting—
the reflection lit by candles,
a single bare bulb
the moon resting her hand on my face
fingers on the pearls of my breasts—
what I need to show you. That stare.
Gravity releasing taut skin, chin
to cheek over bird-bone shoulders
heart shuttered open, intensity angelified
winged gaze—unfluttering.
my face an open stretch of plain,
sky to be sewn shut, made only of
feathers to painted with touch—
too beautiful, you say. the way I
want to be seen, hard as crags
that fall only at the whim of the sea.
to be felt fully, held as the soft weight
of carved stone.

---

Afterthoughts: the frequent mentioning of stone and statue/art metaphors is partially unintentioned--I love the way everyone thing looks when it's still, like a painting. I suppose that's what I was trying to get at--the drama and soulness I feel when I look in the mirror--all alone, all glowing, all myself.


What did you think?

soy una quien busco

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can’t be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, “Why did you come
so quickly?” he or she would say, “Because I heard
your helplessness.”

Where lowland is,
that’s where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.

And don’t just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair our of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
Take the cure for impotence,
that your manhood may shoot forth,
and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight around your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness
to one who helps...

-Rumi

(Ran into this poem at Herbwifemamma's blog...)

The poem is called "Cry Out in Your Weakness", and it's mostly about being strong enough and trusting enough to let "the milk/of loving flow through you". And I vibed with that part too, but the first--the medicine, the flowing pool, "one who helps"... That's me. That's me in a nutshell and a universe every atom.

I'm taking a career/major exploration class in order to find how all my abstract talents and wants and needs in life fit into the concrete workcareerplace, and surprisingly, poetry isn't up there. I love poetry, I am poetry. It is god's gift to me, my words and flow of language, but I don't see myself writing full-time... Maybe this is cognitive behavioral, that the first "real" poetry discussion I got into was MFA's vs. Local poets, i.e. the idea that it takes a degree and proffesional career to write good poetry vs. the value of having a day-job and how that expands and grounds your writing. I still believe in that, and that is why the best, most relatable poets had day-jobs--Plath a professor, WCW a doctor among other things, Al Young held a bazillion different jobs, as have Kimiko Hahn and Marge Pierchy.

Anywaya, so I'm researching majors, and unassumingly open up to the S's.... and to sociology. And social work. And women's studies. (Well, that last one was a given). While I can take all the English courses and pass them and yeah, it'd be fine, these were the ones I'd go out of my way to take. These are the classes I want the reading list for, and to talk with the profesor after, classes with real-life application and learning how society works and analyzing it all to hell--That's what a love about feminism, the way findings and articles are always being criticized and picked apart (man, more positive verbs would be good there), and it's mostly good-natured and expected.

New plan?

Sociology or Social Work Major (with concentration in Community Change)

Double Minor in Women's Studies and Comparitive Literature (which I think will enable me to teach high school social science and English.)

Other news: Joined the Americorps. Will be tutoring and helping run a homework club, k-8, 12 hours a week. Just attended 10 hours of training in communication, classroom management, literacy tutoring, ELL (english language learners) tutoring, phys ed activities, proffesionalism and Americorps Stuff. I feel 10x more confident about working with kids and am really excited!

fate coding

I had a well-written, very angry vent written out to Governator Schwarzenegger re: taking away my Cal Grant/peace of mind/future, then MS word wouldn't let me put it over on blogger because the post showed up ridiculously encoded. So I guess it wasn't meant to be...

Needless to say: I am worried about whether I am going to be able to continue in school, as 3,000 dollars was basically what was keeping me here... And I don't have that kind of money, this job isn't going to pay that kind of money, and I've already signed my soul away. (to serving my community! hell yeah!) ... Mildly nerve-wracking, to say the least.

Wish me lucklove and good vibes...

Feminist Radio

Basically awesome.

[ http://www.feministing.com/archives/010786.html ]

Dear Universe,

I want-need, in this order:

1. To have my ideals, intellect, goals, ideas, and body mutually respected--not overprotected or singularly revered.

2. To be held.






With love, T.


(I could say a million other things, but honestly: this is what I am starved for.)

"Steps of Greiving" & Clarification

eta: I can't get the expandable post function to work, so that's why this blog/post is sooo long. rargh.

First of all, muchas gracias a daisybones for linking to me from her blog! (Even if it was "just" a credit link) Much classier and wittily written I assure you... go check it out! I'm tickled that such a beautiful artist woman linked to moi, heee hee ^_^

Okay, so here's what I would like to put under my "..." of the description on the sidebar, but I can't because blogger is hard to navigate/edit. So:

To clarify, I'm undergoing a healing-wholing from what Western medicine calls "rheumatoid arthritis" and "christ, chill out please!" (acute anxiety disorder). I've come to believe that chronic illness springs from damaged energy, repressed emotion, something that needs nurturing... And that all difficulties are simply opportunities for expression and wholing of the self. But of course, we can't be idealistic every day....

In the RA vein, here is an excerpt of the best writing assignment evere creative nonfic piece I plan on submitting... soon... seriously, any minute now. I don't feel that terrified/sad about the RA as often, anymore, but this piece basically exemplifies the tumultous emotions of diagnosis, to prognosis, to my worries, up until about six months ago... I've undergone a lot of dealing, a lot of new ideas about illness/disease since then....

Steps of Grieving

“Ten years ago we would have given you painkillers and hoped for the best, but now we prefer more aggressive therapies—before the body has a chance to deform or deteriorate.”

Aggressive is codeword for terrifying; though in the grand scheme of things I should be thankful. These nuclear-toxic pills he’s telling me about—“disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs”; they weren’t meant to shut down my self-destruction. They’re made for malaria, cancer, the kind of illness you think of when you hear disease; my lifespan is jeopardized but no more noticeably than a heart murmur or chronic sadness. Five to ten years reduction, on average. I’m almost twenty and I’m faced with mortality and another affected woman’s motto—I’m living a good life, not a long one. A life sentence and how much I don’t want to believe it, to believe anything. I’m angry, almost—with quality and quantity in the balances, God must owe me something.

But it’s killing me, that thought, the loneliness, like an alcoholic I’m self-destructing, my own immune system chipping away at what allows the fluidity of movement, lets one bend easy as waterfalls. If we knew why we wouldn’t say incurable. I could twist the staircase of my genes enough for the information to walk upright; I could turn off the switch into a low power state and finally sleep without the knowledge that my own flesh is silently scraping away at itself, misdirected, a tide pulled to loss by an ill-intentioned moon. Autoimmunity, I’m thinking; the doctor’s steady voice reeling me back to now from a dream of subconscious suicide, a dream I can’t wake up no from matter how many times I rub my eyes each morning.





“At your age the kidneys and liver should bounce back rather well. Side-effects are rare and usually mild—though usually the only reason a patient will stop taking a drug.”

Hair-loss, vomiting, vivid dreams; later, mood swings, water-retention, anxiety, insomnia. My mother jokes that cortisone is the equivalent of PMS and speed, but otherwise only nods at our earnest dialogue. I speak up, my voice, shaking, asking everything I can—how does it work, what are the options, no really please how does it work? It takes me a half hour to get the man to say “The drug interferes with antibodies’ communications with each other.” He wryly asks if I am a biology major. I shake my head no. Words are the only thing I love enough to keep living most days. Poetry as condensed emotion, all feelings held in this petite jar of false fragility, three stanzas. I can’t give you morning stiffness or blows to the knees, disabling fear or creaky heartache, but words—these are the only things I can shape without tiring or shaking myself to terror. It’s a tragedy, drama, monologue and dialogue—but mostly dark comedy, plot twists so common that corners no longer leave me surprised.

Irony makes me sicker than the drugs themselves. The doctor and my physical therapist with their voices turning somber when we talk about “the rheumatoid” it feels more like a death-sentence than the thing that gets me out of bed every morning. Always, your age, your tenacity, your youth—after the first college semester of cheap wine I have to swear off alcohol, the doctor encourages “smoking the good stuff”, chemo has given me a life-time prescription to the morning after pill. These bones are mine but my age is an idea, a date on a card, a day of the year, a constant reminder; a year into college and I have spent two paychecks on necessary drugs that can kill faster than cocaine. The sterile paper warnings tell me to not brush up against pregnant women—and to not become so myself— because, combined, the medications have a ninety-nine-percent rate of birth defects and miscarriages. I cry sorry to my body for this poison, this toxicity, I wonder what else I’m killing as the white blood cells dip dangerously low and chemical waste seeps from my fingers—six months out of high school and I consider getting my eggs frozen. I’d have to go off treatment for a year before conceiving and to breastfeed, and I hate to say it but I am just as afraid for my own pain as the well-being of my babies. I know the standards women are held to as creators, and even more terrifying is being unable to find a man who could see this decomposing girl bright enough to care that much—one who’d care enough to wait for me, for our children. Romantic overtures turn into cold stutters and some nights I hope these beautiful woman parts will become barren as tundra. I’d still be lonely, but at least I’d have an excuse.

---

all work writing and bitchin' metaphors (c) treesa dee, in all psuedonyms and actual names, in all times hencetoforth, past, and present, etc, ad et al. if it isn't awesome you can have it. but well, it totally is.

Blog Blaghs

The view of my hometown from our cattle ranch, complete with our calvy cows and green hills in the foreground. On Saturday I'll be leaving this-- the rural-burb--for the big city....School year, here I come...

I still can't get this blog fixed the way I want it, blargh... And I still feel awkward in my writing--fumbling, unworthy--and I wonder if this is where I'm supposed to be, the "blogosphere". I need to find some disability blogs, get my blog feed set-up, upload some photography, go to some slams, freewrite on the nature nurturing and my weird-ass dreams...

In the world of RA: I began Humira this week--a bi-weekly anti-protein injection. The protein attatches to cells involved inflammation, so ideally all those levels should go down in the next three months. Holy jesus, injecting yourself with this shit hurts. Hurts so bad I took 5 seconds to inject 40 milligrams. Four hours later I have terrible pain in my right hip (hips are unaffected by the arthritis), and my right leg starts to go numb. It turns out you're supposed to take two whole minutes to do the injection. Say what?! My mind is blown. So that's going to become a bi-weekly wednesday ritual: take the Humira out of the fridge, soothing music, lavender tea....

Recap: That's plaquenil (antimalarial), methotrexate (chemotherapy), and Humira (TNF Inhibitor), plus Aruveydic digestive formula (to get rid of am) and nasya (anti-anxiety/Vata balancer). I quit taking the birth control because I don't need it (and hopefully won't in the next year or so) and DUH. I'm anemic. Getting my period four times a year was probably a good thing.

Coming soon.... An awkward racism/classism encounter at a Japanese restaurant, and an excerpt from the piece I plan to submit to Belevue...

(Okay, I still feel awkward. AWKWARD. Maybe it's the glasses. Maybe it's because two people read this. Maybe my brain has forgotten who to write. BLAGH. *headwallheadwallheadwall*)

North Prayer

I give thanks for the fish my man-family greedily steals; far over the limit though not beyond what we can eat. They gloat over sizes and granddaddy stories, whine about aching feet and I know we could have afforded another meat for our supper, but even if our bellies are filled their souls will only be stilled by the rhythm of the fly rod, the focus of the deep pool and softly-loud stream. Is that not need? I ask the corn mother, and yes, she says, men with unhappy day jobs and concrete between their toes seek to be gods on the weekend pursual of innocent bucks, the rocky silence of wilderness and brash backslappings of boys.

Where else can we be men? they ask, and sky father answers, All places under me—but they do not hear. This thankless ungrounded society deludes them, tells them men take and take and power over and beat down and conquer, and they carry this harsh unhonoring with them, from degrading their mates to chasing the antelope until their aging bodies throb, then go back to the cabin full of cheap brews and steaks that died afraid, where they will scrape out their gut-souls with more granddaddy stories and feigned fireside anger. Men? I ask, and as His bearded breeze sweeps through the aspens, they quake with Her laughter, they carry away my whispered prayers of gratitude as I stand by the tail-gate, enraptured by rainbow scales and cold eyes trapped in a Ziploc—brown trout, fingerlings, rainbows, people earth-darker than I say that their wisdom comes from always knowing which direction home is.

Even in my father’s oil-stained hands the hooked trout twists strong as a snake, as a bent willow, seeking the water, the upstream. My boy-family is as out of place in cities, in Wal-Marts and strip malls, but where is their fight to seek the ground? Ten minutes ago this fish was slipping through the stream beside me, unaware, and now lies on my plate floured and browned. I never enjoyed eating fish, and I still don’t. When they take fine-boned meat within themselves, what do the men-boys learn, I ask? Plastic, uncaring, downpayments and empty screens—how much more can my father take, how does he keep his gills fluttering so long away from the hills and the oak? With this, the trees murmur through mud in my jeans, the wind coaxes answers from my creek-washed hair. And I give thanks, for warm muscle sliding down my throat, for my father’s fumblings, for the quaking aspen, for the lies that drive us to seek the intensity of these long hauls and payless days, this condensed, desperate forest loving.

Lungs

Hopefully once school starts my writing will be more current; less musing on the past...
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I was born three months premature, and from the second I was in the doctor’s hands, from November 1988 until March 1989, I had slim white tube go from a ventilator directly into my too-tiny lungs. The wailing cry most babies set up after birth, to tell you that they’re scared and healthy and here? I probably never had that, my mother doesn’t remember. I suppose my first breath was the spring they took me out of the incubator to go home—still only 4 pounds after months of IV feeding. A month later I came right back, with pneumonia complicated by infection-related asthma… Of course I don’t remember that, but I can imagine what it feels like: drowning. I already what bronchitis and asthma attacks feel like, like a fist clamping down to stop your lifeblood, like there are holes inside and no breath makes it to the bottom of you. To have water in them, overflowing each miniscule aveoli in my already bird-like body, doctors with sandbags and buckets, as though your lungs were a lifeboat and the perpetual wheeze and gurgle of a five month old child the winds of a storm.

In folk medicine the lungs are where sadness lie: in the winter, we get lung-sicknesses when we lose the light of the sun; we stop breathing from grief… I still feel sadness there, between my ribs, in the heart chakra (which rules the lungs). It’s a spiked flower opening, a pulsing loneliness, like all the holes in me from sickness, all that pain leaks from one rent in my heart. And what am I sad for? Regret over clothes and my lost grandparents; why the hell don’t boys love me back; my mother’s sister; my elbows don’t straighten; disease; failure to accept what is: they bang up against each other in the dearth of my chest.

Though I’ve struggled to breathe my whole life, two gifts, music and yoga, helped me overcome that. I was told I’d never master the flute because of my breath, the asthma, yet I worked so hard at it I forgot about those handicaps. Each practice I strove for the full, perfect breath, one that fills from the belly to the tip-top of the breastbone. I learned how to ration, how and when for quick Inhalations and big gulps of air, how to preciously siphon it out, note by note. The headache of held breath, the push of lungs to get out that final trill. I was absolutely grateful to realize how precious the flow of air is, how glad I was to find some beautiful use for it.. After I began playing the flute, I rarely had asthma attacks and never got bronchitis or any other terrible lung trouble again—amazing, the doctor’s said, after ten years of breathing hell. However, I still had terrible fatigue and moodiness (partially the RA), still couldn’t get a good breath all the time, still hyperventilated terrible when startled or anxious…

But then came yoga: oh, yoga. The first six months of my practice, while weirdly uncomfortable and painful, at least taught me the three-part breath. It was joy, epiphany, orgasm, to realize that there was a set way to get these perfect, blissful breaths all the time, to realize that this is what we are entitled to, that full lungs are not just random, fateful happenstance! And it all clicked in the last few months at the new studio, how to breath with and into movement, to wrap the breath around you like a cloak… It has truly been a blessing, to realize how blessed I am, to get so much more life and tapas into my system. Ironically, my first breath was a doorway to pain, sickness, and life, all at once, now my breath is the first step to health, the first step to nourishing my grieving lungs, to breathing with the full body like tall plants do, turning to face the sun.

But aren't they all big decisions?

I’ve talked to a few people lately about my decision to eventually get off all Western medication and entirely herbal/REAL nourishments (supplements seems like a weird word) and have been faced with a huge dichotomy. At first it was only acceptance, “Good for you!”, etc, or even interest in my plans and specific herbs (which was super sweet of them J) The next few people wanted to make sure I was planning on seeing a real healer and not “some quack”. Most true fakes will tout a single fruit/herb as a panacea, or are otherwise snake-oilsman creepy, so they’re easy to pick out. On the other hand, most of these optimistic people don’t really understand the nature of rheumatoid arthritis, “a chronic, debilitating auto-immune disease” (In a weird form of coping, I have memorized the wiki article, the hell?) I mean, I’ve lived with it since I was 13 or 14, almost a third of my life, and up until a year ago didn’t realize I was that different from my peers (thanks dorm living!) But I mean, chronic, ie lifelong, ie you will never escape. And it’s the first freaking descriptor in the article. I know if my doctor knew about this plan and I was three years younger, he might get my parents to physically force medication on to me, as to live with RA without medication is a practically a death sentence. Being alive and disabled is supposedly better than being able bodied and dead, but is it really? Questions like that are too big for my headache squeezed brain right now.

Anyway, the other camp: You know you can’t measure those, right? And that they’re really strong? I mean, you can’t regulate them. And then I meet their faces calmly and they shut up, quietly labeling me as crazy hippie girl who thinks she can organically outsmart The Man. If there is one way to bypass the man is will be with a woman. And really, what is growing out of god’s green ground is more dangerous than what’s in that bottle? It’s alive, at least, it has intention and energy and hope. How often to people OD with suicidal intent on “herbal supplements”? And yes, too much of anything is out of balance and can harm you—we don’t eat oleander, I’m not choking down an entire plant. That is what teaspoons are for, and decoctions and tinctures and teas. The idea of I don’t trust my body enough to know when to stop, I don’t know myself well enough to measure how much to eat, this disconnection is what fuels consumerism and an outsourced society: “we pay people to love us, we pay people to heal us.. .we even pay people to bury us.” All you need and all you need to know is within you. I feel sad for people who need a magazine to tell them when to eat (you could argue that Ayurvedics etc do the same thing, though most alt. traditions allow for uniqueness and self-determination, where food-fads and eating publications do not).

I trust myself to, when I try to mushrooms, to try them a little at a time—no matter what anyone tells me, experience or no. I know myself well enough, through different lenses as well as my own, to know when something will not be healing or healthy or nourishing—I’ll know how much catclaw to try, I’ll know when my bodymind no longer needs these (un?)natural blessings of modern medicine. I know enough to choose medicines of joy rather than those ofprocedure, medicine of instinct and earth over medicine of classist schools and racist policies. And yes, I acknowledge that sometimes the needed, fated, natural blessings are Western Mecine. But my eyes are open and I’ve got the woods are clearing out the toxins in my viens, fields soaking up all the sadness in my lungs.

I sat back in a massage chair the other day—it was so soft my body automatically relaxed, and I thought, how long has it been since I didn’t have to force myself to let go? The first time I was so small I don’t even remember, and it hurt—everything too bright and harsh, everyone trying to hurt me. The last time I got my heart broken, broke as my grandmother’s roping saddle, and how long much longer can the heart, the self, survive without that? I’m sorry, but I can’t—stoicism is not something we have to undertake. Sipping lavender tea, a sedative, but the best kind—someone’s arms around, that soft scent holding you while you sleep. Really, truly, bones-relaxed sleep. If it’s out there, that whole healing, I won’t just stand back and watch it pass by. It's my/our duty to pursue the highest ideals we can

tactile poem

I could (should?) write a poem, a book with how I've not been touched, how disconnected and a lost and empty it's made me feel in my short lifespan. I was born premi and spent part of my life in a box, always getting sick so that I could go home and feel loved, safe. (Having a comprimised immune system and chronic underweight-ness helped, I'm sure). My own wounds have kept me from intimate relationships, my own self-sabatoge has frustrated me for seven years, before realizing I'm not ready. Your body knows what you do not, and my desires don't line up with my needs. A desire that goes deeper than sex or death, deeper than your fingers around my wrists or my lips on his neck. Skin on skin is soul on soul, desires and needs I'm still trying to reconcile...
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tactile poem

It is only touch—it is only through touch,

that I find myself

wanting:

pianist hand between my knees,

fingers long enough to

crush love from down the road and even

those caresses I savored; massage chair

beating the back of my heartbeat to submission;

only imagining your palm a sail in the

wind of my jaw do I find my skin

opening like a door, pores faceted,

crystalline when touching the other we

drink until oceans empty, exchanging basins.

But the fingertips, your stubbled cheek,

they still thirst. My aching hand

stretches across the table

of its own accord.

Even my blood is parched,

gravitates toward your nearness

as though trying to drink storm-winds,

laden with water but achingly empty.

Electricity lying with the mountains,

with the heavy clouds,

rushing over my head and all of me shivers

at the mere thought of thunder,

having only dry winds about me

when it hits.

When moving, towards high closet shelves

fingers reaching for the last grocery bag,

wrestling a child into her coat—

each stretch is a gateway,

one side gaping open while the other

falls into itself. How to balance it?

Muscles must move like lovers,

a ribcage apart but with give and take,

though too much is always taken,

so that the skin lies above like a window

and everything peers out in

snap-straight shaking fear:

at the storm that shakes the glass

at the emptiness that whips around

this clapboard house, colder

than west wind.

(all work (c) treesa, under all psuedonyms and pen names, 2008)

'Fess Up...Thursday?

(Brought to you by Yogamum and Literate Kitten)

Basically a post confessing the things you did (or didn't do) to reach your writing goals this week.

As it were, I haven't set any writing goals for myself (beyond homework) for more than a year now. But the main three categories are:

Getting Published: The wheels have started turning on getting that piece into Bellevue... Must print out specs, edit the piece one last time, print out copies of piece, write cover letter, write check... It sounds like a lot to do, but I'm sure it isn't. Also: Submit to Reed this year? I'm pretty sure my brain would explode if I got in, because to part of my still-high-school brain Reed is still Big College Publication That Only Awesome People Get Into, for some reason.

Writing: Scared-Angry Rants to read to a good friend in which I try to figure my own smashed-up-messed-up inner workings. Real poetry? Nil.

Reading: Finished "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruese and "John" by Cynthia Lennon. Am still picking through "Yoga for Depression", "8 Human Talents" by Gurmukh and "Healing Wise" by Susun Weed. Am checking out "Home Herbal Remedies", "Perfect Health" by Chopra and "Your Body Speaks Your Mind" by Deb Shapiro today and will begin picking them apart as well.

Having a job, commute, friends, yoga practice, and house/garden to keep up (mostly by myself) really eats into writing time! It's like, having a life, or something! Oh, and:

Blog: The blog is in limbo, again. I love reading blogs--connecting with a subject through someone who loves it, or just connecting and emphasizing with someone. I love real-people writing. But what do I have to contribute, what truth to I have to speak, how do I write in articley format and not word-vomit blaghness?

I'm sure I know, somewhere, but it hasn't reached my consciousness yet, that's for sure.

On Music & Grieving

(I realize that these posts are really long. I'm still learning--how to write prose for an audience, how to edit in blogspot, how to uncomplicate myself... Bear with me, lovers...)

Part of me is still grieving for the lack of music in my life—and no, that’s not a metaphor. Looking through the closet I caught myself thinking, My tuner, why is the tuner not on the piano bench—and then I remembered, with a pang, that I no longer need it. Not even why, but just that simple fact: I am no longer a musician. And it is just like a death. I did the same thing when my grandfather died when I was about 13—caught myself hoping he’d give me a ride home from school. Wondered why we needed to feed the cows every weekend, why his denim jacket was still over the chair, who would open the pool door, then that quiet voice—Oh. Wait. That’s when you remember. And music is a strange thing to lose, because of how it permeates our culture, how much joy and expression I still find in listening to it. I’ve felt a kinship with certain musicians, and like most kids of my generation (or just most kids?), music has gotten me through rough times. I’m not just talking about Alanis and I having angry girl scream-time over a terrible break-up, or Matchbox putting it perfectly:

Music introduced me to art, which introduced me to artists, which introduced me to some ideas:

a) Its normal to feel things deeply, analyze the world around you, and be sensitive and complicated and “emotional” and “touchy”

b) In fact, a lot of people feel this way

c) But are a bit “messed up”, and usually not accepted by the status quo

d) BUT they also make beautiful art. Also, you’ll get along with them.

e) All of this is perfectly okay, maybe not in society’s eyes, but in something higher—whatever made you this way, whatever source this beauty is derived from.

f) Anger & intelligence = depth &also =superattractiveness

There was that. And then there was music. Sounds. Lush sound that filled your ear in perfect interweaving harmonies and always reminded me of moving landscape. I can’t tell you how full my head is when any more than three notes are played, piano or orchestra, keys and chords that swell until light is pouring down behind my eyes. I had only two instrumental pieces for a long time, the Main Titles and Farewell of Spiderman, by Danny Elfman. I still find the synchronicity angelic, perfect rhythms and tempo lull me somewhere between meditation and heaven. Music is one of the few things, that experiencing it never caused me anxiety, and (until now) was never something I associated with my “weaknesses”—in fact, in my own pursuits as a musician, I pushed myself for four years straight. Every time I felt fatigued or achy or plain depressed, I made myself go to practice, stay late at pit, or play at home, memorize the music, cheer at football games, stand up straighter, lift my arms higher and get goddamn better at what I did. It was one of the few areas that, when I made mistakes, I didn’t panic for too long—I was simply happy to be doing what I was doing. I’d remember, each time I slipped up, No girl you’ve done that and it was wrong, remember? And then that was it.

But there was always something missing—I simply couldn’t get myself to pay attention to music at home for more than a half-hour at a time. My fingers lacked some quicksilver-gene, and my tone, while progressing, wasn’t much compared to my fellow section-leader, a “natural”. I know now that if I had just worked a bit more on those solos, maybe I could have graduated to harder and harder pieces, but somewhere along the line I gave up. I can’t stand playing by myself—without a band to play with, without community, music is just less to me. So in a way, I almost shouldn’t be grieving no longer playing my flute. I have no band, no time, and jesus Christ in heaven it makes my shoulders hurt.

But still, I walk past my piano bench and the music is still set out from last summer. I live in the house my grandfather built, sleep next to his bookshelf—This Old Barn, On The Trail With Luis & Clark, Airwar:Terror From the Sky. I cook in the same kitchen we gathered in the morning after he died, a shocked winter, the stovefront empty without his bustling. I suppose I could sell my flute, donate the sheet music, get a new iron skillet and redo the wallpaper… But this living alongside ghosts, is it really holding me back? Isn’t it pain that pushes us forward? How much do I need to keep in the cupboards so that I don’t forget the love and lessons that quiet patriarch and stubborn instrument have shown me?

Re-Stepping onto the Mat

My yoga practice differs greatly from many others, for both obvious and more subtle reasons. Most people in the West, if they delve deeper into their practice, it is to physically strengthen themselves, conquer asana (pose) after asana, maybe bringing some meditation/relaxation into the practice. Of course, when we clear the mind that opens a channel for change, and many people do find their lives—their selfs—changing greatly after taking up regular meditation. From what I’ve seen, unless someone possesses a great depth and, usually, a great trauma or hurt in their lives, they rarely take the time and thought to use the philosophy of yoga in conjunction with mat practice as a conscious tool for change.

Since I’ve restarted, that’s kind of what I want from my practice—conscious change. When I first got into yoga, I went in to class blithe and enthusiastic—at first. I was overjoyed to find something physical to do that I truly enjoyed, and determined, finally, to accept, explore, and love my body for what it was. Who cares if I can’t touch my fingers to my shoulders? Who cares if I can’t straighten my arms, or if I collapse in downward dog, or can’t rest back on my heels? I went home every night ignoring the pain, relishing in finally feeling energy and tranquility flow through me in ways I couldn’t remember ever feeling before. Always, since childhood, I remember mostly feeling anxious and stressed—either too much in my body, (irrationally?) fearing for my well-being; or entirely out of it, head in the clouds or a book. Yoga equaled peace to me… Until I came down from the initial high and began to look around. The studio I went to did not have kind energy towards the physically unable, the intellectual, or the lower-middle class. It abounded with “kick my ass” suburban moms and twenty-somethings, and more middle-aged lean-serene-yoga-machinis, and had zero sense of community. I began looking around classes, seeing people older than my mother easily doing poses that made me shake and wince. I did remain optimistic, but the idea of my own youth, my own weakness chewed on my mind. Something is wrong here.

And then I was diagnosed. This was after I had finished yoga for the summer, and was off to live my first year at college. A week later I was on a toxic drug that didn’t help at all, had a rhuematologist’s card in my wallet—just in case—and was moved into a dorm with a full load of classes to tackle. Leaving home for the first time, adjusting to the big city, and being diagnosed with a crippling, incurable disease—rheumatoid arthritis— it’s no wonder I was miserable that autumn, though I didn’t realize at the time. I let myself wear sweatpants to class, something I had never done in high school, as I took school seriously. Looking around me, college felt like an extension of the yoga studio—everyone professional, exuberant, well-dressed and well-adjusted, while I sat in the back of my mathclass in stained sweatpants and slippers, aching everywhere despite the Plaquenil. I took a yoga class that semester but only learned, from my rather hippie professor, who looked like santa claus, that Bikram yoga symbolizes everything that is wrong with society today. We did the same slow 4 sun salutations every class, and my mind was usually elsewhere.

After some changes that made spring semester amazing—namely a new roommate, less lounge clothes, and more medication—I’m back home for the summer and at a new yoga studio. I work four hours a week in exchange for free classes, and am on good terms with the owners and a few teachers. I’ve had nine months to come to terms with the words chronic and dehabilitating, and am finally ready to consciously use my Self & yoga as a tool for change in my life. Trouble is, I’m not sure what to do. I never had an intention beyond “love thyself” in former classes, and the last few weeks I’ve spent getting reacquainted with yoga. But now I need an intention—I’ve never felt good categorizing or settling on a single thing for myself, whether it’s sexuality or religion or disease. I don’t want to devote myself to one thing, I want to experience them all, so the labels I do use are usually complicated—“Eclectic Pagan”, “sapiosexually panamorous”. I’m a poet—at least that I can settle on—I like words, I like descriptions, I was made to define and expand upon everything I experience. One word, one idea just won’t do it for me.

A yoga teacher, who’s classes I’ve been to before, described my practice to a mutual friend as pain. Albeit, her classes are Vinyasa (Flow) classes, and I’d say a 7 on the 1-10 Unofficial Difficulty Scale o’ Yoga. So yes,I was in pain during most of her classes—but I found her energy and style of teaching so uplifting I chose to take those classes anyway. I’ve thought about this, pain as a practice—am I causing myself pain by practicing? pain I have to work through? The teacher who made the comment continued, saying that I’d reach a point where the pain would no longer matter. I believe she referred to a change of consciousness, but when I first hear that I was undeniably pissed.

Anyone who has rheumatoid, fibromyalgia, lupus, etc, will tell you that one of the worst things to hear is “work through the pain”. This is not acute pain. This is not a stitch in your side trying to reach the finish line, or a cramped muscle, or a bleeding wound you can sew up. There is no before and after, this is chronic pain, this is waking and sleeping and breathing, pain is not a few moments but your life. By working through—ignoring—acute pain that you feel, you are probably causing irreversible damage to yourself. And I guess you can argue that with any pain, but then I think about the pain that signifies change, acute pain. Something that comes on all of a sudden, something you can forget about once in a while, something that will fade. The death of a loved one, breaking a bone, building muscle. That is the pain we need—the kind that allows growth. Chronic pain, I believe, causes damage without growth (as we were not meant to live in pain), and arises when we hold on to things and refuse to accept what is. When we refuse to surrender and accept the thing that caused the pain, that is what damages us. (And of course, to be explored another time: what I am I not accepting that has manifested into RA?)

Unless you have gone through chronic pain, do not tell me to work through my disease, my pain. Unless you have said disease, an in-depth background in physiology, or are my mother/best friend, you probably don’t understand what you’re saying. (And if you are my mother or friend, you still probably don’t, but we understand each other). When I leave the classroom, the mat, the job, I’ll still have this ache or that flare. My immune system doesn’t sleep, my fingers will not reform when I leave your presence. Getting out of bed is working through the pain. Living is working through the pain. If my practice is pain, then so is my life, as terribly cliché as that sounds. But then, aren’t we supposed to extend our mat into our everyday life, and act from a place of love and acceptance in our mundane encounters and not just in yoga class? I suppose this is why I’m having a hard time “deciding” on an intention for my practice, because to me ife is part of my mat and vice versa. My only “intention” in life is to do my best, to act from a place of love, to strive to be closer to the Divine—that is, happiness, eudemonia—in all that I do. It unnerves me to bring such a vague concept to the mat, for if it isn’t a specific intention I find my mind wandering. I still get a spiritual experience, but not as strong as I’d like. (Or perhaps, not as strong as I feel I *should* get. Hmm.)

Four times now in the past year I’ve drawn Medicine Cards in reference to my yoga practice, and always gotten the same two—Dolphin and Turtle. Dolphin signifies mana, or life force, and connecting to that life force through the breath. Turtle signifies the bounty of mother earth, and using one’s boundaries properties. So before my stretch class tonight I drew Turtle, for the second time, and read it again—I realized, especially after beginning Susun Weed’s Healing Wise, that one way to abundance is through surrendering to the Mother Earth, who in turn surrenders to you. I’ve had a lot of problems with energy and feeling constantly drained/numb, and also have always had issues with security and trust. The idea of giving away physical things has always scared me, I remember identifying so strongly with the things I owned and took into me (food) that disrupting any of that—losing things, giving things away, sharing—made me extremely anxious and hostile. I remember around 8 ot 9 struggling to feed myself, analyzing and planning my meals for maximum nutritional affect, but feeling guilty for eating any more than my sister because I knew we were on a tight budget. The idea of dying and no longer being “me” has kept me up at night as long as I can remember. I’ve gotten a lot better since it was shown to me, again and again, “you get what give”. The generosity of the Universe only extends as far as you do. So tonight in stretch class I gave everything to the Everything, selflessly, but with the faith and trust that S/He woud love me right back. I gave away the new opening I could feel in each muscle, the discomfort, the tingling energy rising up. And she gave right back—I breathed a little deeper into each pose, the idea for this post slowly surfaced in my mind. You eat me, I eat you. The teacher, a kind woman, leaned over to correct my pigeon toes and there were silver turtles dangling from her wrist.

Kestrel Poetry

While trying to decide whether/what psuedonym to use for this blog, I considered the first: Kestrel. A name I went by for four of the hardest years of my life, with people that knew nothing about me, and where I first found my love of community--and long before I was ever interested in animal medicine. It reminds me of fire, that high when you're doing something you love.
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Kestrel, feathered ferocity, the gutteral feminine winged thing, kess-trulll...
If oak is storm embodied then you are wind breathing in down and talons: the dive and rise, scooped wing and soft call, feather and claw, feather and claw.

HOW TO BUILD A KESTREL
After Kathleen Lynch's "How to Build an Owl"

Gather grassland feathers: storm hues. Brown black cobalt blue. Moon's cream. Make sure they rustle; sing folk songs.

Assemble in layers: slim bone, knife sharp feathers, agile as air herself.

Palms together now, eyes to the sky. Whisper, prey.

Feed ballet slippers, running shoes--try the diet of grace yourself and the wind will still catch you but not her, not your raptor womanly as mountains. Ferocity comes last, polished into every edge, especially the unsharpened.

The breeze is her jess and storms leather bells, please Mother, let her lift off. Do not watch for which tree she lands in. There are none here, none that you can see.