oxen free

blessed are the peace makers

your light shines me brighter

your fire burns me hotter

your love calls mine

"olly olly oxen free! come out come out wherever you are!"

What's YOUR voice say?

How many disclaimers does it take to get a girl to talk?  How much fear does she have to sift through?  When does she stop apologizing?

My morning's fresh facebook meme was from Arundhati Roy.  "There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard."

These days I have very little patience for those who are unwilling to look at their position of privilege.   Nothing sparks my Kali tongue like an older white, middle class man telling me what's "best" for me.  Even if he "means well."  While I do appreciate that in I've learned to keep my mouth closed while my heart and tongue burn, I have to wonder if that's really "best."  It certainly works for the old white dudes when I stay quiet.  I do believe in peace and kindness, but I do not believe that restraint is always the best response to anger.  Especially when it comes to oppression.

That being said, I can't help but note that I am white.  Also, I'm young, healthy, decent looking, have tended toward romantic partners of the opposite sex, and was raised Catholic (which is not as proper American as being Protestant, but still more Christian and "acceptable" than all of the other options.)  When I get  down and out, I get a LOT of support.  Of course, a trust fund or an Ivy League legacy would be super helpful, but I work with what I got- plenty of friends and strangers who are willing to lend a hand. Would I get so much help if I weren't a young, thin, white chic with a Christian upbringing and a boyfriend?

Or, the flip side.  What if I wasn't raised in a working class community by a working class family?  What if I weren't poor most of my life? What if I weren't brought up by Catholic parents, with swarms of cousins around me at all times.  What if I were brought up wealthy and Protestant? Would I have learned be so damn loud about what I need?  Or would I be stuck in a Protestant straight jacket, stifled by the cultural heritage of status quo?

If you are not asking what life would be like if you were not you, for heaven's sake please start.  For a better world, start! 

Actually perhaps the question isn't "What would it be like if I weren't me?"  No, actually, the question is "What's it like to be you?"

It's excruciating!   I am SO afraid of hurting someone by bumping into their pain.  So, for fear of making things worse, under the spell of age-old guilt, how many times have I just stepped around and over and completely ignored someone else's pain?  Or, oh, I hate to even say it; what if I have been hurting you without knowing it.  What if I've been ignorant?

Seeing as we've made room in our culture for the idea that every sinner is a saint, perhaps we can all admit our ignorance.  I'd love to hear more people say "I can be an ignorant, fucking privileged asshole.  Help."  And then, "What's it like to be you?"

Here.  I'll start. 

"Hi.  I'm Diane.  I want to be a real writer, and I want to be a real peace-maker, but holy fuck I'm scared.  I can be an ignorant, privileged asshole!  And I've been super hurt by ignorant, privileged assholes.  So I get real quiet sometimes.  Other times I make a whole lot of useless noise to cover up all the fear and anger.  But really, I just need help with this.  What do you think?  What's it like to be you?"

What will it take, you think, before we ALL feel free to tell our truth? 

What the hell is Truth if it isn't free for us all?

life living

I woke up this morning and thought,

"I belong to the living."

I peaked out the window.  Across the graveyard, the sun was beginning a grand show.  First morning waking up in my bed in ten or so days.  I couldn't remember.  I made my way toward the coffee.

By the time I got to the kitchen, five shuffled steps away, I forgot why I was there.  

I belong to the living. The words filled my kitchen like sunlight.  I most certainly do.  Oh, that's incredible.

I always loved that Joni Mitch line.  "I want to shine at the sun.  I want to belong to the living."  For many years, deep down, I believed that I belonged to the broken.  I belonged to those who were not quite as shiny and alive.

I started writing a blog, this blog, in January 2010.  It was the dead middle of some dark years, and I was attempting to blast through some loud inner-perfectionism by showing my writing.  My friend Tanya encouraged me every single time I posted something.  I was thinking of my broken years and of her brightness in my life  and of my recovery when I forgot the coffee, basking in how good it is to be so Diane these days.

Tanya passed away on the 18th.  I found out in the morning of the 19th.   I gave a bunch of flowers to the Gingko tree that lives across the street from my bedroom window, at the edge of the graveyard.  I burned incense there and I prayed for her.  She loved that hippie stuff.   On the 20th I took off for 10 days in the woods, which felt appropriate.  I went with my boyfriend, who doesn't know Tanya but really reminds me of her.  On one of our walks he pointed to a plant and said, "that's mullein." I said, "like for lungs mullein?" "Exactly.  There're lots of uses for this plant."  Tanya could and would do that, point to a plant and let you know it's long list of uses, if you cared to know.  Learning about all things earth is heaven for this urban/suburban-raised, Sagitarius hippie-want-a-be.  It was comforting that he is like her in that.  Familiarity certainly helps grief grieve, but also it made her passions occur as immortal.  So I had ten days in nature, thinking about life and Goddesses and community and love and death and friendship and passion.  And living.  Yesterday we came home and I went to her memorial.

And this morning I woke up in my bed.  In a room across from a graveyard and a Gingko tree.  The flowers are still at the Gingko.  I added rose petals from her memorial service.

I feel so unmistakably alive.  I feel sad.  I feel excited.  I feel loved.  I feel...whole.  
I feel like I need coffee.  

I thought of Tanya's travel mug with the sticker "Give me coffee and no one gets hurt."  It was on the table where I sat with several of her other work friends, my friends, our friends, my former co-workers yesterday.  Her husband had put out random belongings that were very much part of who she was.  "Relics."  Her poems were printed out and scattered on table as well.  And stencils and little colorful stickers, very Tanya.  We laughed when her husband brought up the love of coffee and pointed out the mug.  She made us all laugh, that one.

The laughter had a timeless quality.  I hadn't seen half of these wonderful people in years.  I was amazed at how relieving it felt, and how much love I felt.  The laughter felt familiar, and like it never actually stopped.  Just paused.

Funny.  These are former co-workers. People who I haven't seen or really thought of in a while.  And it felt so good to be with them.  I was a little taken aback by something... I realized actually really love them.

That's one thing that I do quite well, one thing I love about being Diane.  I love.   And sometimes it hurts.  Often it hurts.  Sometimes it feels vulnerable, or embarrassing even, and I hide somewhere safe.  Sometimes I hide in that safe place a long, long time.  Mostly, though, I love and love and love.

I got back in bed with the coffee and a book called "The Rebirth of the Goddess."  I purchased it last night, after reading a chapter and balling my eyes out.  We said the Lords prayer at her memorial yesterday, followed by a prayer to the Goddess.  Several hours later, I find myself crying with grief and with gratitude.  She was a gift in my life.  I stayed in bed a while.  It felt like the perfect thing to do, a little Goddess excavation while thinking of Tanya on Easter Morning.

I hadn't seen Tanya in years until I saw her in the hospital.  When I started this blog, we had kept in touch quite regularly via the internet, but I hadn't seen her face or heard her laugh in at least two years.  The past couple weeks, I think of how many times Tanya or I said "We really should get together.  I miss you."  But we didn't get together.  

It makes me want to gather you all in my home.  Tomorrow.  By five.

I wrote a poem of sorts the day that I found out that Tanya was not going to continue treating her cancer, and that she didn't have long to live.  I sat down, compelled to write, on a cold stone bench in my little city, crying in broad day light, writing with a small purple "Miffy" marker.  I'm going to post it below. I'm not going to edit it.  I'm not going to edit this post much, either, because i'll never get it perfect and i need to live on.  What Tanya taught me (taught many of us) so well was to LIVE, dammit.  My goodness, she LIVED.  The fact that she is not alive today really punctuates the dammit.  It hurts.  And I'm awake.  When I started this blog, it was a "fuck you" to perfectionism and a "Hell yes" to the unique view that makes me me.  Tanya really was my biggest support.  She even told me that she started her own blog because mine inspired her.  To a girl who wants to belong to the living, that is certainly something.

Over the years, as I grew and grew, I removed most of the postings from this blog.  I've changed so much.  I've healed.  I woke up this morning with the astounding realization that living does not occur, as it did for most of my life, as something I will do some day.   The women who, like Tanya, paid attention, who heard my pain and my excitement and my joy, and said simple things like, "you're doing it, love," they were my midwives.  We midwife the living in each other.  We birth our stories and our light.
It's Easter Sunday.  I am reborn.  We are all reborn.  It's about damn time I let this living life boil over in words and song again.
___

On the day that I found out that you were dying

I went into a quick haze of fix-it,

called a friend who loves you too and left a message,

     planned a visit in my head,

     made mental note to ask my church to pray for you and your family,

     thought about your kids,

Then found myself in the doorway, crying.

I stepped outside, where there was no haze

Just the brightest sun I've ever seen on a February day

The colors of the little college town were louder and

they played with the day.
I saw a young woman with Green hair and loved her
and i thought that you would love her, too
An urgency swept over me  
to live and live and live
and I walked off, in a daze-antidote

I spend so much time dreaming that this level of awake feels like day-glo
quiet, and screaming
and almost too real to be real

and it felt like a gift
and i knew it was a gift
and you are a gift
and i am a gift

I fell to the nearest bench to write down my praise
---

I could only find this purple marker in my bag.
It feels perfectly playful
like you, beautiful.

I can feel the wish at the edges
the desire to have my impending prayer matter.
                  "Don't go!"

But I've learned that it isn't up to you or me.

So, I'll say "My friend...

just in case this is goodbye
please know
that you are pure gift
that you teach me to love more 
that you leave me loving stronger, brighter, 
and with more urgency

as well as softer, kinder, and with more faith.

And if it really is goodbye
then I say 'goodbye for now'
and until then i will miss you

And of course, Thank you, Beautiful friend."

River watchers, rice farmers, soft-skinned fishermen

they met us on the porches, smiles and hands and hugs

they tied their good wishes to our wrists with strings,

loved with their eyes.  baffled, we understood.

children ran, wide eyed and terrified

"be good or white people will eat you."

so they fled, and laughter spread

the village spilling over languages

known and unknown

the houses could not contain--

was it their curiosity or mine?

they stood right in the middle of the road
they talked and laughed and looked 

when did i go home?

i can't get anything to feel the same 

i do the next right thing, then the next right thing

on my wrist i wear dirty string

Go-getters, hard-handed blue-collars, academic types

when do we really get to go home?

funny enough, I think creating a blog made me stop writing.

I have a new sense of my boundaries now.  Turns out I don't really want you all to know.  Turns out I'd rather fill up journals with songs and poems and give my friends clear instructions to burn them when I'm gone.  Finally, something I can be consciously selfish about without feeling any pangs of guilt.

I'm going to slowly take all of this off of the internet.  I'll still share with you, maybe, if you ask me to.

sabbath rain

I woke up to rain, and my first thought was "I'll take it."

It's okay that my sheets are on the line.  It's okay that they've been there for three days.  It's okay that they are now wet again.

And it's okay that I can't keep up.  It's okay if I never catch up.

The sun porch is messy.  The rain is perfect.  So is my morning cup of tea.  The shimmering song is ancient, gentle and unrelenting.  The moment is fresh and poised.  Today I will let the rain be a comfort.  I'll let it wash my silly reasons into the meaninglessness and all-meaning silence.

someone somewhere

She made a pretty penny in real estate.
but never did fall in love.
She had a certain taste for fixer-uppers,
for sledge hammers and roller brushes
perfecting and moving on.

Pocket Guide to Grace: Lesson 76

When you find that the world is spinning, hold onto something stable and stop turning yourself around.

drunken daffodils

The daffodils clearly had also had too much to drink during the night.  They stood slouched and hung over the puddles and the sopping grass.  I felt comfort in their kinship, their rebellious vibrancy .  Though oppressively loaded with the evenings's storm, these daffodils were shining in chorus, singing gleaming hymns despite the fog, despite the burdensome grey of the morning.

I had no idea why I was awake.  The sun must of come up, I figured, though I couldn't see it.  I couldn't recall sleeping, but I also couldn't recall not sleeping.  As I pieced together the evening, I became pretty sure that I had still been awake and pushing words through my whiskey seasoned vocal chords long after the bars put us to the streets.  I was with the boy again, probably saying words I'd regret if i ever remembered them, probably talking myself right into bits of sleep caught on his shoulder.  But now I was awake, disoriented, (perhaps broken-hearted), and hanging out with slouched and singing daffodils.  We were all still intoxicated.

I had been sitting on my back steps for at least an hour, but I wouldn't go in until I had found whatever there was to be found in the morning.  The knuckles on my index fingers were smudged with my eye makeup, and all of my fingernails were black-tipped and gritty.  I  cleaned the salt-spots off of my glasses with my dress, and gave up trying to remember the evening.

The weight of the air comforted my weighted heart.  The fog in the back yard forgave the fog in my mind.  The daffodils seemed to say "Hey, we've all had it rough.  Be still, and shine."

This was the first day of spring.  Soon after, my life and the magnolia tree above the daffodils exploded into bloom.

exclamation

the short hand for my reflections on life these days is:

!!!

The end.