Story-telling

I read the other day that many of us, if not all of us, have large blind spots in our eyes. We only see so much of what is going on and our brains fill in the blank or gray areas with things that we think we should be seeing. 

//

We sat in the dining area at Phoenicia and spelled out for one another the painful memories we have from our experiences as people of color. She told stories of being overlooked and misrepresented. I shared stories of feeling confused from being swung from one identity to another. We both lamented with tears in our eyes and apologies in our mouths.

I’m sorry that you have had to feel the pain of swinging from one identity to another and not knowing where you belong, she said.

I’m sorry that you have been overlooked and misrepresented and that I have contributed to that, I responded.

Take a sip! We giggled and both grabbed our coffees and took a big, warm, caffeinated sip, the healing waters of reconciliation and forgiveness flooding our eyes.

In this sacred moment, Red gave me sight. Red gave me freedom.

//

Story-telling has risky qualities. There are possibilities of being misunderstood, rejected, slandered, and misheard. If, however,we can move past the fear of feeling that our experiences might sound invalid, beautiful vulnerability can happen and when we open up and share with someone something that deeply hurt us or is sacred to our souls, we can then connect, empower, heal, bless and encourage one another. 

I think that story-telling is gift-giving, is healing. It’s mud and spit, hurt and pain, sacred and reality being rubbed in our eyes and in-turn, our sight is restored and we are no longer blinded by our privilege and ignorance, but awakened and the eyes of our hearts are no longer filling the gaps with hurtful assumptions. Receiving the truth of another’s experience through their stories has the capability to widen our vision and give sight to the blind spots of our hearts.

Gray

This morning started at 7:07 because I was afraid that sleep would linger until 7:18 and then someone would have to come get me. This morning, Tarrin read me quotes out of a book I had written off as too fundamental. The author talked about not boxing in truth to anything, not even to an unconventional thought process, and I felt ashamed that I’d thrown that book out because the words seemed too Christianese and the author talked too much about “things that I already knew”. 

This morning I sipped about two ounces of Vietnamese coffee with my co-worker who I feel mildly connected to because she knows the smell of an Oriental market and reminds me of my grandmother. 

This morning my boss is wearing bright blue neon colored jeans and an orange plaid shirt and shiny pleather flats and I think she looks more divine than she ever has in a fancy dress and tall heels. Mismatched clothes and shiny flats make me  think that her armpits probably smell like sweat when she steps out in the Houston weather and maybe she farts on her couch at home and she probably gets boogers and her shit stinks. She seems more Divine today because she looks more like me, she seems more relateable, closer to the earth with her flat shoes and comfy clothes. But clothing is just a part of our illusions anyways, so. 

Tomorrow is my Sabbath. Today I’m like the Gentiles and  I’m wondering what I will eat tomorrow morning when we have no tortillas or coffee or bread. Tonight someone will be talking to us about white privilege and how to “move from guilt to action” or something like that. I’m prepared to be confused yet again because some people call me white and some people speak to me in Mandarin when I’m walking down a sidewalk. I’ve often been left wondering where all the in-between people are and why even issues of “black vs white” are made black and white and what about all of us gray people in our gray areas.

Sacred Sun, Sacred Rest

This weather reminds me of Seattle. Red's from Seattle.
It was gray and wet outside and I was happy for that. Gray skies and wet pavement means rest and warm beds and warm coffee, hours of drawing and creating and reading and naps, candles and slow movements; the silent presence of my housemates as we all independently do whatever we'd like. Motionless on the couches except for the turning of pages, on the floor of a bedroom wrapped in throw blankets; silent, but together.
I took my first outdoor breath to a brilliant gold, my favorite color. The sun was setting, Do you feel that?! It's chilly out here! She said this with a smile as radiant and gentle as the light that illuminated her hair and eyes and skin, The pavement was puddled, the sun was staring at Herself in a watery reflection. The earth was enlightened, the sun kissed us above our heads, from across the freeway, in the shallow puddles under our feet.
This day of rest was Sacred. This moment told me that all is good and all is awakening. This moment told me that I am brilliant, that the very essence of all that was beautiful in this external moment exists inside of all of us as well, and my heart beat a little quicker and my eyes gulped and swallowed as much as it could and I felt content. I felt present and I gave into my heart's longing to just be, to just exist. 

Little Bodies Full of Knowing

I like to imagine that babies already know everything. I like to imagine that they are the wisest beings on earth. So wise, in fact, that they need not tell anyone about anything (unless, of course they’re hungry or their arms are trapped in their blankets or they have something in their eye). Knowing makes them content; experiencing God in the depths of their silence is enough.

It’s as if God can tell them every secret, give them the answer to every small and large question because their silence will keep those secrets safe for a time.

I’d tell you about Truth if I could just keep my head up, they cry.

But don’t worry fellow mortal, my mom is making me do tummy time for ten minutes a day now, so soon I can teach you the ways of the Infinite. Soon enough and then you too shall know, they coo.

But then they sleep off all of this infinite wisdom, cry out all of the compassion they feel for all of the clueless people they know. They have it all figured out until one day they say their first word, take their first steps and begin their journey back to the infinite places from which they came; forgetting all that they understood until in time they re-learn it, realize it all over again.

Truth then, is kept safely in a baby’s silence.

* "I’d tell you about Truth if I could just keep my head up", something Tarrin jokingly said when we were discussing this idea while holding Quentin (shown above), our city director's baby. 

On Those That I Miss

Your words are always simple, but I know that your feelings touch depths that some are too afraid to explore. I miss you, Tay! I really miss you! And I know that you do. I can feel your pained, voided, heavy heartbeat behind those words; the longing of a mother for her child, for late nights watching Forrest Gump, for walks to the coffee shop, for laughing off irritation and realizing that we’re not as hardened as we feel.

I translate your simple, I really miss yous, to, Please come home. I’m hurting and I really wish you were here to laugh with me.

We’re both really good at laughing.
We’ve both been healed by our laughter.
//
I remember that time we were house-sitting and they had a cat whose purr sounded like people chatting outside. I’ve shared a little of that moment with other people and now that cat’s little purr has turned into an inside joke.

If I miss one thing about you, I miss your humor. I realize now how it’s so much like mine.
There is that temptation to take my missing the way you made me laugh and turn it into longing for who we were and then bitterness for that no longer being available to me.

I’m seeing though, the wisdom in not plucking a flower in order to take its beauty for my own possession, but rather, leaving it planted so that it may remain alive and beautiful.

So I will leave our memory a memory and no longer try to morph it back into a reality. Seasons are seasons. They are born and they are taken away by the wind.

Our sorrow has carved much room in my heart for joy.

thread

I listen to Comptine D’un Aurte Ete, L’apres-Midi by Yann Tiersen and remember Stacy playing it in a coffee shop downtown. It was late, she was gliding across chords on an old, out of key piano; our own little sage-y green room, women whose names escape me but whose faces still remind me of the season where my spirit took a lot of hard beatings. Stacy’s pulled back blonde waves that really wanted to be ringlets; chai, tiramisu, spicy brownies. Women whose boyfriends and husbands were best friends.

On Febrauary 14, 2013, I went out for chips and salsa, avocado tacos and Stacy got a margarita and we ate good food, hiked up the cut and gorged ourselves on all the chocolates that her husband had given her that morning for a holiday that doesn’t offer anyone a day off, but just ends in a lot of sex or a lot of lonely tears or with the sore hands and tired backs of child laborers forced to pick coco beans for Ghirardelli’s biggest sales day of the year.
//
I know I just ate and I’m staarrving, I said as I rolled around dramatically on the couch holding my not-yet-satisfied stomach. You’re not starving, she said in her “I’m irritated that you just said that”, voice. Oh my god, it’s just an expression!, I defended myself. No, I, I know people who are actually starving, followed by a shaky, “I can’t believe we’re talking about this” laugh that in a text message might have been followed by a, “….”.

A deep sigh of irritation came upon me and I felt myself abandoning myself as I often do when I feel like I’ve just gotten caught being wrong.

I woke up at 4AM that morning to the thought of, How am I going to pack up all of this stuff? Where’s the wood going to go? How in the hell am I going to get that on the plane? I then remembered thinking that my mom was coming to pick me up (in three months) and as I tried falling back into sleep I thought again, But how am I going to pack all of this up? There it was, my desire to escape has followed me into my dreams, no longer present to the moment even there.
I awoke every couple of hours until I had to meet everyone out in the living room at 7:15. I remember thinking to myself in between those hours of sleeping and awaking, Wow, me in another dimension keeps going in and out of sleep. I wish they’d choose one. (I’ve been playing around with a funny little theory that we all exist somewhere else other than here and that when I am sleeping in one place in time, my other self in another place in time is awake and etc.)
//
I craved Comptine D’un Aurte Ete, L’apres-Midi today like one craves corn dogs or ice cream or hot sauce on something savory.
I think it’s funny this song is beginning to act as a thread in which every  dark moment in my life connects. Like elementary school children clinging to a rope to help them stay in a single file line.
//
I can feel myself gong in and out of silence within myself. Maybe it’s that instinct that I have to abandon myself. Maybe I just need to give myself space to just exist. Whatever it is, the overwhelming feeling to make it up to everyone and explain and apologize for my behavior is heavy, is debilitating, is oppressive.

Why must I explain anything?
Why must I be understood?
Why do I want so badly to be understood?

"Speak to us of Love!"

When love beckons to you, follow him,

though his ways are hard and steep. 

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. 

And when he speaks to you believe in him, 

Though his voice may shatter your dreams as 

the north wind lays waste the garden. 

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. 

Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. 

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses 

your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, 

So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. 

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you to himself. 

He threshes you to make you naked. 

He sifts you to free you from your husk.

He grinds you to whiteness. 

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast. 

All these things shall love do unto you that you

may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become of fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your heart you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, 

Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,

but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. 

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. 

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;

For love is sufficient unto love. 

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."

And think not you can direct the course of love, 

for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. 

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. 

But if you love and must needs have desires,

let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody into the night. 

To know the pain of too much tenderness. 

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully. 

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give 

thanks for another day of loving;

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved 

in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, p.10-15

Painting done by Kahlil Gibran