“Whatever we pay attention to, we care about. It brings out our caring. You discover the belonging that was there but hidden. It is there with every living thing of this universe if we slowed down and we reached out. Not only does it wake up our hearts, but it ripples out.”
I have never loved another. I am incapable of this task alone.
I have not even loved a cat, a dog, a tree, myself, no one.
There may be channel for love through release, but I don’t have to look around that corner. That corner will come to me, not my business.
It is arrogant to imagine I know what love is.
The ones I am supposed to love by all earthy definition walk by me and at times I feel nothing but annoyance. I might get a painful inner heart squeeze even at the sight of them, but is that love? At times I only see reflection. At times I don’t even see. I am unable to define and perform in accordance with what I think that love is. I love no one, no thing, nothing!
I release this idea of love. I release the word. I release.
And when I do, I am just here.
I can get still enough to stop doing what I think love should look like.
I’m left with only the senses, not the thought.
I am free to not love ever again as me.
Yet I am still here;
nothing has changed visibly,
though perhaps I sit up more as the weight of performance is taken off my back.
Mirrors mirrors on all sides
you magnify what is not
and let me simply be here.
I’m in the middle of my first semester teaching a class classified as remedial.
I can relate to this term remedial.
Each student is dear, this is clear, but i am at a loss to teach the basics that teachers have been repeating for years to these on whom it didn’t stick. Why didn’t the basics stick? There is a separate and complex answer for every single one. Each seat filled with a story, eyes conveying a barrier for the process. I have never looked into so many eyes who want to be elsewhere.
I leave the class exhausted and depleted, feeling that I could use some remedial help in helping the remedial.
As souls, we meet in a room and I am touched by the loveliness here. But the frustration for everyone is also palpable. When frustrated, what is the normal human reaction? Push back. I bend in sway in this breeze. I brainstorm how to teach this class better, each night, yet lessons fall flat, in part because I have slipped out of ease and into trying. I appreciate that I can see this shift as it occurs, or soon after. I make the familiar leaps in my brain, and slow these steps down, but they are not the logical steps for my audience.
The students in my regular college-level classes in contrast are looking like geniuses. I lean into them like colleagues in the bar after work. We share a common purpose, to make some progress in 7 weeks. The remedial students have a different flow.
It is good of me to stretch, to fail, to try again. It is good of me to get depleted to show where my imagined boundaries are. It is good to not be able to rely on any old dog tricks of charm and tap-dancing for entertainment. I am dying over and over – surprised to wake up again and again in this body and in this life – every morning a new introduction to myself in the mirror. This person, the I, goes to work, tries, again with this trying, succeeds in ways she will never even know and fails in ways she is equally blind to…
—- the grief can come in waves for the one who thought she knew something true to teach, for the one who thought her ideas were smart, for the one who laughed at her own jokes. There is nothing that can go that should be held on to. How ready I am to stop with everything false, clinging even as it tastes like metal in my mouth? A million mirrors are closing in on all sides of the me now. If I compare me to yesterday, I have given up almost everything that once brought me pleasure in exchange for smelling every smell as it arrives, sweet and foul no longer relevant. Broken can become – only this: there is seemingly a nose and seemingly a breeze – and a schedule arranged by god. There is nowhere I have to be that has not been preordained. I am on some edge that looks like giving up freewill and intelligence. I am giving over my voice and my eyes – I am emptying out of opinion. Who will fill the air now? We will see, now won’t we?
my gut tightens from a sound
angry voices rise outside
peering out the peep hole
giving space to work things out
i’ll check for my mail later
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sensing something’s wrong
is the start to make it right
all are welcome here
****************************
muscles in the jaw
set our teeth for war in cars
throw away the clock
****************************
corners of my eyes
wabi sabi wrinkles
I’m folding into me
****************************
all i see is good
always has it been –
just just –
twinkle berry
flower cactus
solo cat
its time for tea
again
a ritual night
reveals the loving pruning
of life –
from throngs of children who visited a false castle
to a night at last of only one tricker
(who is one)
who has never had candy
coming to the door
carried in her father’s colorful arms
receiving my full attention
and a bowl of sweet exchange –
all the wonderful death
that has led me to such a quiet night
can be said like this:
that witch is false
must die – also
that which is false
must die
no greater gift could there be
than this assurance –
in a winter garden
there can be no false flower
i’m a true beauty skeleton
a dry and crisping flower pressed
in the book of my life
brown more ravishing than red
until spring returns
wind rustles brittle, tall grass
crows call from trees
as me
Life as Improv 