"You shall love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart."

As I Walked out One Evening
by W. H. Auden
As I walked out one evening,
        Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
        Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
        I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
        "Love has no ending.
"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
        Till China and Africa meet
And the river jumps over the mountain
        And the salmon sing in the street.
"I'll love you till the ocean
        Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
        Like geese about the sky.
"The years shall run like rabbits
        For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages
        And the first love of the world."
But all the clocks in the city
        Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you,
        You cannot conquer Time.
"In the burrows of the Nightmare
        Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
        And coughs when you would kiss.
"In headaches and in worry
        Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
        To-morrow or to-day.
"Into many a green valley
        Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
        And the diver's brilliant bow.
"O plunge your hands in water,
        Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
        And wonder what you've missed.
"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
        The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
        A lane to the land of the dead.
"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
        And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer
        And Jill goes down on her back.
"O look, look in the mirror,
        O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
        Although you cannot bless.
"O stand, stand at the window
        As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
        With your crooked heart."
It was late, late in the evening,
        The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming
        And the deep river ran on.

This poem has made me "insane with love" to borrow a phrase from a long-ago journal of a long-ago Jonny Strange. It's stunningly depressing how preoccupied my mind is with aging lately. Guaranteed to make those little rabbits scamper even faster. I'm all about foreboding joy, but I am also beholding my little ones. Chai is so funny and sweet pounding on the drum I gave him for Christmas. I want to drink him in, his sweet smelling hair, his little "Hmms" for yes, his "Are ya comin' downstairs with me?" Sparrow stalked and toddled around the living room while we opened "sibling gifts" and felt all fancy with her jingle bell bracelet. She has warmed up to the Ogden folk but is still a huge sassy pants and stamps and shakes and howls all the time. We watched Emily's GOTH for my mother, a slideshow of all the pictures ever taken in all our lives. What a weird world, where I can still see the Peckerbeak shadow on the ceiling as I drift off in this ice cave. I asked Sparrow if she loved me and she nodded. I am so grateful for my sweet goons. For the work of listening with a kind heart. For having a social life, however humble. For having someone to dream sweet dreams about.

Trying to bat cliches away from my face

I should have grappled with impermanence
In my adolescent brain,
instead, I fretted how to best break the good news.
I planted a tiny furtive garden
salting the soil with expectations of second chances.
Safe inside the confidence of a ceaseless spring,
I cradled my sweet fragile blossoms
and inhaled the scents of belonging,
of existing always,
of nothing lost.
and now my adolescent brain is frozen in terror:
winter is a gate we walk through one by one.
This garden will be repossessed.
What will we become when we finally melt away?
Will anyone find my words one day?
Everyone believes youth will always shine from the mirror
It can't be real, watching your own face wilt and droop with autumn
Going numb piece by piece
I leaned on your steady chest and thought,
this heart. this heart. this heart.
I don't want it to ever stop beating.
You made me alive, peace by peace
Early summer in our garden today
We hum, and sing, and gather
Across the river, we can see the lights go out
gunfire, brainfire,  lay waste
Til we all lay, waste.
When that final hour comes,
If we are lucky enough to recognize it
I want to lay my wounded head on your softening chest
this heart. this heart. this heart.
this heart.
this
heart

Autum Healing Circle (letter to my missionary sister)

Hi, Cow!
Your thoughts about Buddhism in your last email were really fascinating. I hope we can talk more about it in a few weeks. I love how much you treasure your experiences. You should! They are precious! I think you have a gift of savoring the abundant pieces of life and acknowledging their depth. I'm glad you have that gift. I'm glad you have been able to connect and feel for so many people. There was such a rare chance you would ever see their faces, and there you are...

I haven't even journaled about what happened last night, because I was so full of glory that I didn't want to commit to a single scrap of language, it seemed powerless compared to the tribal drum beating in my chest with such hope and happiness. I feel such resounding, deep fulfillment in my life right now. I woke up and thought, I bet Cow feels this way about some of the really powerful days she has--like you wish you could stop and just let that gladness reverberate and bask for awhile before having to have another sleep, another day, more packed chaos of life, another box of emotions to manage. Then you have this incredible memory of how you felt, but you have to stack new moments on top of it.

So I had my autumn healing circle; I invited the women in the postpartum group and some other friends I thought would appreciate it, and encouraged them to bring women who would benefit. It was so powerful. I'm really just so happy because I did so much research about healing ritual in other cultures and tried so hard to find ideas that I could adapt, but I ended up just deciding that the most important thing was to make the space for expressing sacred loss and pain, and to trust that the space would be filled, and that the individuals who participated would know how to do the work they needed to do. And they DID! I was so in awe of everyone's courage. I love this quote by Bruce Perry: “All people at all times, in all cultures, and in all places of the world have dealt with traumatic events and loss in the same way. They sat around the campfire and retold the story of the battle, the loss, and the trauma. Those closest to them bore witness to the story by saying “It is so”; while comforting and nurturing each other. They created songs, stories, and art to memorialize their feelings and thoughts about what had happened.
So today… Let us tell the stories; let us say it was so; let us dance and sing; let us break bread together; and let us hold each other.” -Bruce Perry

I ended up just creating most of what we did at the circle, using the experience I've had with blessingways as a tentative guide, but I felt free to combine therapy and art and meditation with other stuff I just made up...this is what I shared at the beginning:

"This healing circle is a soul-guided ritual. In light of this, we ask that everyone stay mindful, flexible, and speak consciously. We also ask that everyone stay present during the ritual, focusing on the work you need to do and sending others here your love and support. We all have a lot going on in our lives, so if at any time you become distracted by your own thoughts and feelings, please acknowledge them, but then put them away somewhere safe, so you can do the work you came to do tonight.
The purpose of this Healing Circle is to provide a space where you can do the work you need to do for yourself. You may have recently lost someone precious to you, you may be grieving what could have been, have experienced trauma, a dramatic life transition, a betrayal or serious disappointment, or maybe you are struggling to give yourself compassion right now. This will be an evening dedicated to the wounded, and we have all been wounded by something. We will “make the quiet” necessary to feel, weep, explore, or connect—whatever feels necessary to honor your loss. Because of the very intimate nature of the work being done, when you are asked to share, you have the option to do so silently if you prefer, and we will hold the space and wait with you until you have done the work you need to do.

A healing circle has the power to evoke very deep emotions. Should anyone in the circle feel the need to release tears, we ask that you please not touch them or offer them a tissue unless they ask for that. Though well-intended, offerings of comfort can actually shut down a wonderful release process. This healing circle is a no-fault ritual, so please don’t be concerned if you’ve never been to a healing circle before. In this safe and sacred circle, ALL your contributions will be honored."

I had asked them to write a 10-12 word "poem" describing what they feel they need to heal from (they could share it or not). This caused them to start doing some important work before they even came to the event because they had to think through their experiences and their pain and decide, make tiny choices, about what to express. I made the 10 word limit bc I thought people would feel intimidated by the instruction to write a poem, but THEY BLEW MY MIND. Most women just went ahead and wrote a full-on poem, and it was incredible to hear what they brought. Betrayal, abuse, death, heartache, self-loathing, fear, they bravely piled it in the center. The poems were unbelievably profound and so personal. After each women spoke, she went to the middle and added something to our salt bowl and mixed it in--oil, roses ("November roses") fruit, tea mix. It was so grounding to be able to push your hands into something solid and move it around after going to a deep emotional place. We sang together, we cried together, I saw people instinctively scoot closer and hold one another when someone was processing something particularly difficult. I invited a therapist I used to work with who is also a yoga instructor to do some body work and that was another incredible piece of the evening. Such beautiful, kind imagery she created. I wish I had written it all down, just taken notes instead of participating. My friends' mother came up to me and thanked me for inviting her because "she did things for me tonight that no one else has done for me in my life." And honestly, thats true for me, too--something subtle she said made me feel a glimmer of possibility that I could change the way I felt about an aspect of my body I've always despised.

y friends Wendy and Laura sang this song:
Low, lie low, my dear little one,
Under the starlight, under the sun.
Under the bluebells, under the grass.
Low,—lie low as the solemn wheels pass.
Yesterday, yesterday two little feet
Ran through the meadow, the wildflowers sweet.
Snowtime and flowertime cover you deep.
Low,—lie low as I lay you to sleep.1
Blessed, oh blessed the day of our Lord,
Blessed the dead—who rise at his word,
Blessed the angels who swing wide the door.
Blessed the time when I hold you once more.
Blessed the time when I hold you once more.

There were a lot of tears. But as everyone said afterwards, there was connection and honoring in those tears, not helpless sadness. Many women I talked to alone described feeling that they were moving forward. They said it felt so good to just be surrounded by loving people and to just be with what they were feeling instead of pushing it away, trying to walk around it, save it for a more convenient time.

Another cool moment for me was that a friend who lives in Maryland happened to be in town bc she is caretaking her sister who is very ill, and I invited her to come. I didn't know it, but another guest (my friend's mother) had grown up with this girl and has known her her entire life. I watched her hold my friend as she wept at one point and I was so astonished that this moment was happening and so proud of myself for trying to in my clumsy way to facilitate something that had do many reverberating affects. I saw my friend whose is experiencing a lot of pain in her marriage say "I am enough. I am worthwhile." Someone came with serious bitterness towards another person who was present and she  hadn't wanted to come, saying she didn't want to be around her. I encouraged her to do her own work. She did and she told me afterwards that she felt "truly purged" and she was ready to bury her weapons of war, as it were. We did many, many other activities but I won't tell you about all of them, because I'm hoping to do a healing circle for each season (so November, February, May, and August) and I would love if you could come to one sometime! I was actually wishing that you and Mary could have been there last night. I know you would have loved it.

Ah, thanks for listening! I just feel so grateful for this space I am beginning to carve out as a leader, as a wounded healer, as a creator of sisterhood/tribal connection. It feels so significant and genuine to me. There are no rules, I can just be myself and respond to my intuition. I love this! I feel it is so needed and I feel so good that for all my flaws, I have the capacity to put things like this together. It also makes me feel so hopeful for my relationship with my daughter. When I first found out I was pregnant, I felt like I had nothing to offer a little girl except for a long string of bad news. Now I feel confident that although I will surely keep evolving, there is a rich world I can travel with her.

Remember the time you drove all night, just to meet me in the morning?

I want so badly to write in a way that is evocative of the tender and bone-deep pieces of our lives without having to name them, list them. I know I’m not delicate enough; I squash them between my fingers with clunky words and maybe sometimes even accidentally stop the heart of meaning from beating. I want to back off, maybe not even touch, but just describe what I see. But I’m not sure how to do that here. I’ve never written this out before, and I know the farther away I get, the less I will remember.

This time of year speaks to me of courage and radical change. I remember the surest way I was ever befriended. And when the flame eased out of the leaves that year and we walked quietly into winter, I held that fire. I was not alone. October 27, 2009. Four years ago today I told Jonathan we could be ‘together,’ and that’s the story I want to tell today

Without getting wound up in recalling the treachery and angst of my dating habits, it’s crucial to know that my getting to know Jonathan and falling in love with him changed everything for me. This can’t actually be a post discussing the many ways I was a cruel and terrible person, or about the anguish I feel over working out my power and self-loathing issues with actual human beings with feelings, because I will totally distract myself. All you need to know is, I was pretty unhealthy and I was NOT in a place of wanting to put any real, honest work into a relationship, and the last thing I wanted was to be in a progressing relationship, in fact at the time I was practically phobic about progressing relationships and in the twisted venn diagram of love I had created, I was all about maintenance, equilibrium (see also: stagnancy) although at the time I might have called it “friendship” (false).

Fast-forwarding through the classes Jonathan and I had together in 2007 where we never talked to each other, our amazing first date where I wanted to tell him ‘all that I ever did’, our second date where FeministGate occurred and nearly ended it, the redemptive game night with his friends and spontaneous bonding at the Evergreen Conference (what better place to flaunt our heteronormacy right?!), late-night drives through Hobblecreek Canyon, deep and deeper conversations, watching him play guitar hero and being crazy attracted to him, the time he brought me kiwis when I thought I had swine flu, all the lyrics we posted on facebook, painting the walls of his friends’ house when he told me “you’re so damn cute!”, the book he left on my porch so I would find it in the morning, the night I gave him my journal from Romania…all of that…it was early October, 2009.

We were on the couch in my apartment, in the days where I still held a pillow on my lap as we talked. He caught me off guard by saying,
“So, I really like you, and I’m wondering if this is going anywhere.”

I distinctly remember being a little disappointed that he was so direct. If I had to have a DTR (they were to be avoided at all costs), I preferred that it be couched in really complex metaphors like a law of chastity lesson (tip--dontsaytip--: this also gives an out so you can pretend you thought they were talking about something else). I reflected that we were getting to know each other, that’s where it was ‘going’. He asserted that he wanted to establish parameters of the relationship. I fluttered away and said vaguely that I felt such things were best left unexamined, forever if possible. He restated his intentions and clarified his terms. What that sounded like exactly was this:

“I just need to know, if we’re going to be together, that’s cool, but I’m not really into doing some kind of group thing, so if that’s what you’re into, let me know, and we can just be friends.”

Some kind of indignation pinged in the back of my brain that he would dare to name my modus operandi: he’s not allowed to TALK about the ‘group thing!’ and my heart felt stung, we can just be friends???! Dismayed by this blasé display of healthy boundaries, I bartered for time to ‘think about it’—with the unexpressed thought that if cornered again, I would just ask for more and more extensions of time while (hopefully) we got closer and closer, and I’d never have to commit. He wanted to know how much time I needed, exactly, so we could revisit the discussion and either level up or else date other people. I was completely appalled by his lack of game, and part of me was devastated that he was so nonchalant about the possibility of not continuing to date. And to be fair, it wasn’t all arrogance—we really had only known each other a couple of weeks, and although I really connected with him, I didn’t feel like ‘myself’ around him yet. I couldn’t imagine calling someone my boyfriend if I wasn’t comfortable being silly with them. Another thing that held me back was the fear, or mejor dicho, the knowing, of what I would lose if I chose him. No more swinging free, I knew some people very dear to me might cut me loose. The thought of that was truly terrible, truly crushing. Jon and I had also never touched other than hugging goodnight, and I felt like it was a little soon to be together with so much uncharted territory, empty space…I tried to say these things. My voice felt small. He was determined. “I know I want to be with you. Just let me know what you decide.”

It felt so different from other times. There was no pleading, no poetry, and no elaborate promises to try to lift my heavy heart. Somehow the idea that a person like that—confident, self-respecting, would chose me, would want me, warmed me all over where threats of heartbreak kept me cold. I thought about him when I was falling asleep at night. I wrote, “I love how steady he is. I love the words he says that cast clarity on my own unformed thoughts. There is a lot to look up to. It’s good for me…Right now, today, I feel so happy, so hopeful. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I am hoping, you know?”

He asked me to spend a weekend with his friends at their cabin. I was frightened that with that much uninterrupted time, he would find me boring. I told him so and he said I was crazy, so I took a risk even though I was nervous. What I realized there was that boring had been the place I lived before him. I remember so well the almost dizzying wonder I felt starting to really get close to Jonny, holding the hot-heart secret thought that we could really be. Seeing him immersed in his own context, away from chaos of trying to “maintain the chain” in my own life, cleared away some haze of my insecurity and I really saw him: his intelligence and strength, his kindness, his competence and his affection for his friends. He was so naturally good. He was so clever. I quickly became enamored of everything he did. How he siphoned the gross water out of the hot tub while we were cleaning, sang “Grey Street” in the car with Brian, and caught my hand for the first time in the parking lot of Snowdragon. How we listened to “Pet” on the way home from dinner and they felt it so deeply it was like we were all inside the song. How he suggested we jump off the dock into the freezing pond and then run upstairs to the hot tub again. How when the movie started and I wasn't sure where to sit, he just pulled me onto the beanbag with him (!). How he kissed me on the forehead a few seconds later and then said softly “I’m sorry, I just—“ How all night he kept saying we shouldn't fall asleep together, but didn’t want to me go. “Just stay a little longer.” Then when he finally sent me up to the loft and I said goodnight, he called, “Can I come up there with you? Just for a minute?” Around 5 AM he asked me again, if I’d thought about it, (being together) and we talked hard, and I cried. I told him about the ones I was worried about losing, how much they meant to me. Now, I think I was crying in that moment because I knew I was already gone.

I waited for a few days to see if that feeling of glory would fade, if my gnawing terror of commitment would return (it did, later on, but that’s another story). I just kept feeling good. I was disjointed and fidgety at class, at work, etc, but when I went to see him I felt like I was home. I wanted to stay. Of course, even this was grounds for drama. I remember complaining to my sister that I couldn’t stand feeling so good about Jonathan, “What if this GOES somewhere?! I can’t I can’t I can’t!” She reassured me that I could just do one day at a time and said “What do you feel like doing today?”

I felt like saying yes. Yes to taking a chance on something that made me so happy. Yes to respecting boundaries and committing and trying to create something together. Yes to things I usually couldn't even bear to look in the eye. Yes to choosing this person I had already chosen. And I still felt that, the day after, and the next day, and the next.

Jon had told me before about how he answered a girl who had asked him to a dance—when you grow up in Utah you get to plunder those memories of elaborate invitations and gruesome puns—he sent her to the graveyard near his house and set a cactus on top of a grave with a message that said “I’d be prickled to death if I could go to the dance with you!” In homage to that specific creepiness, I scribbled him a note saying I wanted to try [being together] and drew a gravestone and cactus: “I’d be prickled to death if we could be together now.”

I was almost as excited to give that note to him as I was about my decision. I’m not sure what I was expecting—he held such a confident, staunch attitude all through the talks and negotiations. I thought maybe he’d joke or tease me. I waited while he read. I threw my arms around him maybe in a nervous attempt to bridge the awkward space of my vulnerability (sometimes eye contact makes me feel shy and holding someone feels better). I wasn’t expecting him to collapse against me, something like exhaustion, and something like relief. He was quiet. He held onto me. I said “Are you happy?” and he said “I am so happy.” We were still. My heart was beating so fast. He whispered, “I didn’t think you would.”

So we began that evening, in a place of reverence, of tentative joy. We held hands and I remember thinking, “This is my boyfriend, this is my boyfriend!” The next day I wrote these lyrics all over my notes in my child welfare class: "And you said it was Strange, you said everything changed/, you felt/

as if you just woke up...I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been/but I/ know where I want to go."

Little boy lost

I was sorting through the boxes of kids' clothes tonight and it was startlingly sharp to uncover baby Chai's clothes and feel as though he'd suddenly gone away. "Where is baby Chai?" He's sprawled out inside a lanky two year old body now and recovered from his cold long enough to run outside in the rain and kick the ball with his daddy. I watched them through the window while listening to Pam England talk about "what kind of mother were you, before the unthinkable happened?" I thought he looked just like a little boy. Tonight after I finally got Sparrow to sleep I crept to the blue armchair where he spends many hours perched and plugged in and I rested my head on his belly and he said "You sad?" and I said "I tired. I so tired." He touched my hair and said "You happy...you not sad anymore."

Setting aside clothes for my nephew Jesse made me feel more confident in letting some of them go, but in my secret heart I am saving that box not for future babies but for the ones who are already growing up. Jon teared up when he saw "the red jabbies" and said "I miss my boy. My little boy who crawled up to me when I came home from work."