Stay by Allie Larkin: some of life's essential questions

I was thrilled to recently attend the Chicago book tour/reading for Stay by Allie Larkin. Months ago I promised Allie, a writer I met through her blog a few years back, that I would host a blog tour for her here at Notions of Identity when her book was published. I then proceeded to become much too busy, and the review became a casualty of my crazy life. When I heard her publishers scheduled her for a Chicago tour, I excitedly (if a little sheepishly) made my way to Borders to meet her in person and plead forgiveness.

Allie was, of course, generous and forgiving. And funny! After meeting her in person, it isn’t difficult to believe she could create such authentic characters and humorous plots. She was also quite inspiring and is living proof that a long (5 years she worked on this book!!!!), hard, diligent writing process can pay off. She also loves German Shepherds – and I’m pretty sure I read somewhere on her blog she likes Barry Manilow – so I consider us practically separated-at-birth sisters (I mean, really – how many people like German Shepherds AND Barry Manilow?)! She is a wonderful, talented writer, and I so enjoyed listening to her read and meeting her in person.

As for the review, let’s be real (if admittedly pretentious): much “chick-lit” on the market today is terrible. The characters are often underdeveloped; the plot is either uninteresting or insanely far-fetched; and, the writers’ voice is weak. Left disappointed time and again, I’ve come close to turning away from the genre altogether. Until I read Stay that is.

On the surface, it would be easy to say Stay is a witty, heart-tugging story of Savannah “Van” Leone’s journey in healing from an unrequited love (for her best friend’s new husband) with the help of a drunken online purchase: a large Slovakian German Shepherd puppy she names “Joe”. While that statement would be true, the book is more multi-layered than a simple commercial romance novel typically promises. Stay is full of detail-rich writing, a vast array of authentic characters, and an intricate web of subplots that make it worthy of devouring in one sitting.

And I did devour it.

With the remnants of a recent heartbreak still swilling in my stomach, I commiserated with Van like a sister. She is my kind of protagonist after all: smart, loyal, and independent (and she has a filthy mouth, too!). Her escapades made me laugh; her misery made me cry; and, her underlying strength made me more resolute in mine. She asks – and ultimately answers – some of life’s most essential questions about love, friendship, and family - and although at times she is messy and less than graceful, her progress is real. As discerning readers, don’t we all appreciate reality? And secretly, a happy ending, too?

Here is Allie’s website for Stay. The picture of the adorable German Shepherd is her very own pup, Argo. Here is Allie's website, The Greenists, where I first "met" her.  You'll enjoy both. I know I do.

sliding, part II

Maybe, it isn't about the sliding after all. Or if it is, perhaps this ride is a spiral slide - the descent not nearly as swift but full of new angles, wonderful twists, and sweet discoveries all the same.

sliding

I've started dating again. As I've been advised from a variety of people in my life, I'm seriously putting myself out there, making eye-contact, widening my narrow description of "suitable", and considering my options. And it's different. Not terrible, just different. Even if contrived, as the dating process often is, some of the time it is fun. Exchanging witty repartee with smart and attractive men doesn't suck (hell, realizing smart and attractive men even exist is almost worth it regardless of the outcome). Blushing at suggestive overtures, lovely compliments, and experiencing periodic zings and first kisses is entertaining - at times even giggle-inducing. Most days, I think I can do it, but other days it can be overly consuming and exhausting. And having to remind myself to tone down the intensity of my expectations seems counter-intuitive. I'm not completely convinced much has changed: casual dating was never innately natural for me before I met my ex-husband, and perhaps it never will be. Maybe I'm just not made that way.

I've also tried hard not to compare these men with the ones in my past for whom I've cared deeply. But that, too, takes effort. I find myself wondering all sorts of things: about timing's impact on their imprint in my heart, about truth, hope and about patience. Somewhere inside, I'm questioning if my response to a man is the same or similar as the one I had when I first touched or kissed the men I've loved before. And the truth - if I'm honest with myself -is that since my last relationship (or non-relationship as I'm fond of calling it), I've yet to feel it: that immediate sensation of sliding into a possibility with another person. That moment when you meet him and you just know you want him in your life - that you've come across something special, something rare. The steadfast knowledge in the deepest region of the heart that underneath the pain of timing or fate working against you, you are changed simply by knowing him. I've met nice men recently. I'm sure they are special in their own way, but I'm not sliding. No matter how much I want to, I'm not.

Time. In my head, I can hear the response of my friends: give it time. Be patient. You just started. Perhaps they are right. I can't help but think, though, that love isn't something one comes upon as part of a process. For me, I don't want it to grow from mutual "like" or bland contentment. Which means I'll need to embrace and accept the bone-deep loneliness of aloneness instead of seeking a way to muffle it. Or not. Ultimately, only I can determine if I'm willing to engage in situations without the sliding. Only I can decide if needing the sliding is unrealistic, and only I can wrestle with my expectations for finding it again.

heartbreak is cyclical

I'm sitting on my back patio on the most beautiful sunny afternoon. It's the sort of day that encourages long leisurely stretches and loud generous yawns and discourages rigid time frames and shoes of any kind. Beside me is a pot of hot tea and a bowl of yogurt-covered raisins and almonds. I'm telling myself I'm deciding whether to bake or read or go on that picnic I've been dying to have, but to be honest, I'm pretty content just worshiping this rare moment of peaceful solitude. After the upheaval of last week, I'm welcoming the warmth like a starving woman welcomes a loaf of bread.

It's going to be difficult to get all of this out. I'm not sure my articulation will be at its best; too much is still circling around inside of me, but before too much time passes, I want to try.

My week in Detroit was life-altering, heart-shattering, and healing all at the same time. I felt so much for enormously sustained periods of time I thought I'd burst into a zillion pieces. How one city can hold so much trauma and tragedy and still welcome hope and healing is amazing to behold. The media encourages us to be scared of Detroit and its citizens. Reporters call it an urban wasteland. Racists call it a jungle. It is neither. What I found was a city - struggling for sure, but rising, too. For every boarded up building, I met a person committed to change. For  every corrupt politician, I met a child full of hope. Flowers do grow in Detroit. And so do ideas about sustainability, public policy, and urban renewal that renews the people, not the corporations who pay to move them somewhere else. There is so much potential in the city of Detroit, we'd all be heartless fools to turn away. I wish the country could read about that in our newspapers and magazines.

The possibilities, while inspiring, were also heartbreaking. In order to grow, after all, we must first intimately face how we betray each other for greed and gain. We must acknowledge our limitations. We must accept criticism. We must honor our rage but recognize when it silences instead of motivates, it is time to find new ways to communicate. It's a process. And the heartbreak is cyclical. So, too, I hope is the healing.

So critical analysis of the forum? No. I left with too many questions for that. Questions that are still swimming around in my head and my stomach. Questions that make me wonder what place I have in the movement,  what kind of activist I am, and whether I'm better sitting at a computer than I am on the picket line. Questions that force me to take more time to be. To pause and sift through the emotions the experience churned up instead of rushing back into the fray. Questions that make me yearn to reconnect with the mentors and white allies who first fanned the sparks into this flame. They were everywhere in Detroit, the shadows of these people. I saw them everywhere. I felt them. I missed them, and I couldn't help but wish they were sitting beside me feeling the questions, too.

And that, my friends, is all I have for now.

back

I'm home from Detroit, and it was amazing and heartbreaking on numerous levels. But, I'm over-saturated, and it hurts to feel this much. So - I'm going to take a while to process and unpack everything I experienced, and then maybe I can write about it.

For now, my facebook status update on the second day of the forum will have to do:

immersed in the human condition this week: heartbreak and healing, criticism and connectedness, angst and alliance. It's living poetry here at the USSF.

and off we go!

I'm leaving soon for Detroit for the US Social Forum. I don't anticipate I'll have time to update while at the forum; but I do hope to have some in-depth analysis when I return in a week or so. In the meantime, help us out by sending positive and peaceful thoughts and energy to Detroit.

US Social Forum: We Can Change Our World

We are told we can make a difference. Our parents, teachers, counselors, and mentors tell us over and over we can change the world. We can make it better. But we don’t want to perpetuate a society that marginalizes people based on race, gender, socio-economic status, or religion, so we become activists and organizers. We don’t want to perpetuate the inequalities in education, so we learn to create democratic classrooms. We don’t want to let large corporations decide whether we get healthcare, childcare or fair wages, so we unionize. We don’t want to abuse our environment, so we become conservationists. Every day, we are trying to make another world possible.

What we aren’t told is how heartbreakingly isolated and difficult the work for systemic change can sometimes be. We aren’t always given the tools and resources needed to maintain the improvements we do make. We struggle to create autonomous communities, but in the process struggle against the rise of old power dynamics within these communities.

And yes, sometimes instead of persevering, we quit. We burn out. While our movements might ultimately be harmonious, they are often logistically disconnected and competing for the same resources. In a world where anything is possible, we need more space –better space – in which to support each other. We need to build relationships that reinforce our interconnectedness as human beings, our right to the basic necessities in life, and our awareness of the power we collectively hold to solve global problems.

This summer, we have an opportunity to do just that. Detroit is hosting the US Social Forum 2010 from June 22-26th. The US Social Forum is not just a conference, although there will be workshops running each day. It isn’t just an event, although there will be art, music, and other creative expression that will bring you to your knees and get you on your feet. More than anything, the US Social Forum is a process – an ongoing people’s movement to create new systems, and a celebration of hope and possibility. It is an amalgamation of dialogue, reflection, testaments, and action. It is providing a place and time to network, articulate a vision, and define future strategies for social, racial, gender, environmental and economic justice here in the United States and across the globe.

The US Social Forum is an opportunity to share tools and resources with each other. We will converge in Detroit only to disperse again, yet we will disperse with a vision, with renewal, replenishment, reaffirmation and recommitment to our struggle. We can change the world: it is possible.

Come to Detroit. Change your world. Change our world.

risking new beginnings

In two weeks, my daughter turns six. Six. How does this happen? How does one day necessitate binkies, imaginary friends, and stuffed monkeys and the next demand fierce independence and disengagement from these same soothers? Her legs are growing long - she is all legs - and I imagine her heart and mind, too, are expanding to process and encompass all the world offers and takes away. She is kind, sensitive, empathetic, and as I watch her grow so fast - too fast -  I'm so damn proud of her. In all the uncertainties in which I live, I know if I've done anything at all right in this life, it is my daughter. That I know.

It was with her in mind - with  her always in mind - that I recently contemplated returning to my hometown and the life I left behind a few years ago. After receiving a professional offer someone more sane (I like to think less brave, but more sane is probably closer to the truth) than I would never turn down, I came within an inch of pulling out the boxes, packing up the books and clothes, and returning. I could start over, I thought. It would be different this time: I'd be running to something instead of away. It would be more practical, more affordable, etc., etc. It made sense. I achingly went round and round. I conversed with my long-lost friend, Insomnia, and together we wrote list after list of pros and cons. But I kept thinking back to my daughter. I kept thinking of the lessons I've been striving to teach her about following her heart, about finding beauty in the pieces instead of the whole, and I knew if I made the decision to return it wouldn't be for the right reasons. It would have been fear and convention instead of risk and new beginnings. And I didn't make the choices I've made, or hurt the people I've hurt, or planted the seeds I've planted these past few years only to choose fear and convention. What kind of modeling would that be for my girl?

There are other reasons, of course, that I had to say no. I'm in the midst of an exhilarating love affair with Chicago, and leaving her would break my heart. I have family here - even if I've chosen them rather than been born to them.My little one loves her school and is building solid friendships. Professionally, there are things I need to finish here before I leave again; there are also some things I need to start, some stories I need to find courage to write. And somewhere deep inside, nestled between instinct and hope, something is telling me there are people I will love - people who might actually love me back this time (and no, I don't think I've met them yet). I can't leave. I just can't.

If, as I teach my daughter, I'm trying to find beauty in the pieces, this process was nothing short of stunning and complex. There was the lightness of being wanted and respected. There were warm memories of a happy, if not raucous, childhood home - a home I am lucky enough to return to anytime I choose. There was the unyielding support from my parents regardless of my choice. Even reminders of the painful choices of the past,of all the missteps were shrouded in a pretty mist.  I'd like to think I wrestled with my past and won, and now I can move into my future carrying no doubt, just hope.

Just hope.

are they just simple?

Ah, the questions swirling about tonight. From my own personal "research", I have stumbled upon what appears to be a sociological conundrum. See, I know - either casually or personally - quite a few (ok, more than one...to me that constitutes quite a few) good-looking, intelligent men. This is a good thing, no? Absolutely. Good looking men are nice companions. It is even better if they smell good. I can't lie: I enjoy them immensely.

These men to which I'm referring also happen to be unusually intelligent. They have many of the signs: large vocabularies, good educations, decent grammar, strong writing voices, real books on their nightstand, etc. Most of them are good to their mothers, pay their bills, own stuff, and one or two might even care about making the world a better place, too.

Why then, if all of these rare qualities exist together in what appears to be a diverse melding, do they choose relationships with dumb less intelligent women? Underneath the shimmer, are these hunks simply...well, simple? Are they unable to unravel the twisted complexities of a woman? Scared? Or just unwilling? Perhaps their ladies in all of their vacuous adoration are just replacement mothers - either the benevolent and submissive mamas they never had or those whose molds they are endlessly seeking to fill. Perhaps these women girls don't ask questions. Maybe they think these guys know everything and to challenge would be disrespectful.

Seriously, though, don't these men get bored?

Is adoration without stimulation horrendously suffocating only for women? And before you say, "well, I'm sure the boys are being stimulated quite sufficiently", I'm going to stop you right there. I'm not talking about sexual stimulation. And if I were, I'd make the point that there are gads of intelligent, attractive women who are spitfires in bed, so sex just isn't an acceptable excuse.  Then again, I've never had a penis, so maybe I'm just wrong. Whatever.

I do know one thing: potential is a bitch. Watching intelligent, attractive men spin in circles trying to avoid it is an even bigger one.









 

in your eyes

I've been so busy and am getting "so tired of working so hard for our survival". Whether it is frantic May in schools or something larger I'm not sure. But I do know my words are stuck again. Lodged somewhere between my gag reflex and gut, they sit atop shallow breathing - pushing, pressing...pressuring. I need something - or someone - to help me simplify it all.

I swear it was a sign when Peter Gabriel's song played on the radio this morning.

love, I don't like to see so much pain
so much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away
I get so tired of working so hard for our survival
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

-Peter Gabriel, In Your Eyes

Here's hoping you have someone to help you simplify and keep you awake and alive.

leave-taking

I recently read about Alli Magee of Steen Ink in a post on Ms Single Mama, and my heart broke a little for her. (An aside: Alaina, aka Ms Single Mama, is a wonderful writer. Her stories - her life - prove being on your own doesn't mean a world without laughter and hope. That she would post Alli's story so readers would support this newly single mama also shows her compassion. If you aren't familiar with Alaina's blog, you should be.)

Anyway - back to Alli. She is a 20-something living in Ireland. In January, her husband of seven years left her with...a 1 year old and...a baby on the way. Now I'm not about to vilify her husband. We all know people have their reasons for doing what they do, even if those reasons hurt people badly and even if we think in the same situation we'd choose differently. We certainly know I've made my own choices that might add up to sin in others' opinions, so let me repeat: this is not about her husband. Judging him is Alli's privilege, not mine or yours. It is, however, about the interconnectedness of heartbreak. Grieving. It is about the process of leave-taking and how it is laborious and nuanced no matter the loss, no matter the loser.

Leave-taking hurts. It does. Sometimes I wonder if it ever stops hurting completely- if I'll ever stop mourning the life I thought I wanted but that ended up being so much less than I needed. Sometimes I still wonder if I gave up too easily - if I was mistaken in making my own happiness such a priority. Instead, perhaps I should have endured denial and misery as long as I wasn't hurting others. I don't know. I wonder. It makes me question my fidelity, and I'm not sure I know how to trust myself anymore let alone encourage someone else to trust me. How do you ask another to trust you when you've already broken a heart? How?

Alli will have her own struggles in mending. She'll ask her own questions. She is asking them and asking them beautifully. And as much as she's hurting now, she'll get through -simply because most of us do. We mourn. We retreat from life as we knew it. Parts of us might disappear. Other parts reappear.  And all through it, we question ourselves. But as we are questioning, we have no choice but to put one foot in front of the other and move. We think the fog will never lift, but one morning we awake and our child is smiling, the sun is shining, and we don't hate ourselves so much. I wish I could hold Alli and assure her of this. Most of all, I wish I could ease her aching loneliness - the loneliness only a mother doing it on her own can understand. I hope she has people she can lean into for strength and hope when her own wanes.

Leave-taking is hard...maybe our support will make it less so for Alli. Visit her here.

the sprint

God, the final stretch of the school year brings long days and short, short nights. Mornings come quickly. They are dark and hard and full of wishful backward glances at the pillows and sheets tangled on my bed. It's a sprint really, these next few weeks, and there is never enough time to warm up properly.

But then it will be over. This year, I am waiting for it to end. I am waiting for the swift, sweet, cool relief of days unmarked by alarm clocks, human time clocks, appointment books, obligations. I am waiting for the weight of collective teenage angst to slide off my shoulders into sand. I am counting on summer rain to wash away any vestiges of "to do" and "must be". I am hoping for the sun to shine clarity and the moon to cradle hope. For the wind to carry change. Fearless, bold change.

So much to ask for tonight. So many dreams and intentions to settle into. So many prayers to offer up. So much love to send to so many. But this must be enough because the nights are short, and morning comes quickly.

exquisite moments

There isn’t much time to write here lately, but that doesn’t stop the moments. No, those keep happening. Like a slideshow of candid snapshots, my mind catalogues and plays them over and over. So sweet and poignant, I only want to capture and hold onto them lest they slip away while I’m sleeping.

What do they look like, these moments? This past week they were

-four of the five ladies in my house gathering in the kitchen late at night: the teenagers lying on the floor and us moms sitting on the counter. We talked and listened honestly about all things sex: masturbation, intercourse, kisses, experimenting, power dynamics, etc. We laughed and sighed (and maybe later in private one or two of us cried). It was good.

-my roomie/bff and I doubled up on the floor squealing with laughter at something one of us said…the kind that pushes the tears - and bladders - to the point of explosion. Squealing...seriously.

-the sound of my mama’s voice on the other end of the line.

-estrogenfest: our weekly dinner parties where tots, teenagers, and their mamas eat, drink, laugh, and eventually collapse into a food (or martini) induced coma. Boys are invited, too, but we will never change the name.

-a headstand so strong the wall behind me was superfluous.

-sun shimmering on the lake; old-school hip hop on the playlist; Millennium Park fountains; Art Institute paintings; spring tulips; bare legs; flip-flops;writing so smart it's poetic...

Exquisite moments they were.

Here’s to many more.

saving teachers instead of billionaires

This is a really decent article written by Les Loepold that explores the lack of critical discourse we have about what those billionaires we bailed out actually do while we willingly stand by and let those to whom we entrust our children sink.

Why do we save billionaires but not teachers?

illusion of separateness

We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

 This quote has been rattling around in my head these past few days. After learning of Arizona's disastrous decision to pass SB1070, the leaking oil pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico, and Chicago state reps advocating for the National Guard as an answer to gun violence, I'm close to shutting down. Inside, I'm weeping at the destruction caused by provincial policies, fear, and carelessness. I'm begging for our politicians to engage their constituents, to work on solutions with the citizens of Chicago instead of threatening to militarize our neighborhoods. I've screamed so loud and long for hope and love, I fear it's become nothing but a whisper. An unanswered, silent plea.

We live under an illusion of separateness.

And it is killing us.

awareness

Even as my eyes struggle to stay open, and I know I can't provide details to help you understand it, I won't sleep unless I acknowledge it.  It being 

• awareness that even on one of the worst days of my life, my bad isn't the bad of women of color living in poverty on this globe. 

• awareness that the waiting room in a certain part of the federal building feels like a great equalizer but isn't really. 

• awareness that sometimes when we feel bottomed out - empty of everything but the feeling of failure swimming in our stomachs - we can still get hit by a truck. (Yes, I did. Really.)

• awareness that beneath the fatigue and layers of self-judgment nestle glimmers of hope and happiness. 

• awareness that in each ending blooms the chance for a new beginning.

a nice reminder

"Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love...Above all, always be capable of feeling any injustice committed against anyone anywhere in the world."

--Ernesto Che Guevara

tired

      "That's just the way those kids are."


                                                   "It's what they hear at home."


                 "Their parents don't care."


                                                    "Nothing I do works with them."

Bullshit.

Educators, I'm tired.

I'm tired of fighting with you. I'm tired of hearing this crap come out of your mouths. I'm tired of you casting judgment and abdicating your responsibility. I'm tired of you writing a detention that sends a student to "be dealt with" by a stranger for an exchange that happens in your own damn classroom. I'm tired of teachers who teach to do good and rescue kids instead of teaching them to rescue themselves - if they are even the ones who need rescuing at all; I'm not sure they are.

We've fucked up, educators. In the name of no child left behind, we've left behind everything. We've all stuffed those voices deep inside - those voices inside of us that protest each time we hand out the standardized test, each time we let a student walk away from us in pain, fear, or anger. We operate in such a cacophony of chaos we don't stop to listen when our own conscience tells us this just can't be right. We aren't doing this right. We don't stand up. Day after day, we don't show up for our students. What if we did that with our own children? What if, every time our children were hungry, we said I'll feed them tomorrow. After that attitude, they don't deserve it, and I'm tired. What if, every time our children were hurt, we sent them to someone else instead of providing comfort and a space to process the pain? Well, folks, congratulations. We do.

Because, They. Are. All. Our. Children.

We allow our students, our children, to starve intellectually. We box them in, package them up, and send them out whether they've learned a damn thing or not. We make them sit in a classroom after experiencing trauma, and we don't give them art or music or movement or teach them any way to work through the gut-wrenching feelings of trying to survive in this world into which they were born. We don't give them tools to challenge power structures that keep them inferior. Hell, we don't even teach them about power structures. We let them starve.

And I know - believe me, I know - it's hard work being a teacher. It's hard work being an administrator. It's hard work answering to parents and politicians and unions with their own agendas. It's easier to be permissive than it is to dialogue. It's safer to walk away instead of engage. But it leaves them hungry, our children. It leaves them empty.

I'm tired of us, educators. I'm tired of you, Department of Education. I'm just tired.

echoes of fascism

I consider Noam Chomsky a true intellectual; you all know this already. So you'll understand when I say I'm worried after reading Matthew Rothschild's article on Progressive.org where he writes about Chomsky's recent comments about the risk of fascism in the US. We all (and by all, I mean conservatives, liberals, progressives, whites, blacks, browns, yellows..you know, all) need to take this threat seriously.

“I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio,” he said, “and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering” here at home...The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime,” 

 -Chomsky  in Madison, Wisconsin, where he received the University of Wisconsin’s A.E. Havens Center’s award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship.

 Matthew Rothschild cites other comments from Chomsky that further support our collective awareness of this threat.

old friend

Sometimes we are lucky enough to have evenings that transport us back to the people we used to be when our entire lives were still ahead of us. We get to smile the smiles and laugh the laughs that fed us when were young. Like reclaiming a pair of favorite skinny jeans we can squeeze into again after losing 10 pounds (or 10 years), for a few moments we marinate in the comfort. We marvel at the fit despite the undeniable fading or fraying caused by the truth of time, of choices.

I saw a good friend tonight I haven't seen more than a few times in the past several years. When I was in high school and college, he was one of my closest friends: the rare boy with whom I never had to act less smart or less intense in order to be appreciated. And although our friendship never evolved into a romance (or maybe because it never did), he will always have a little corner reserved inside of me - a special space filled with affection, warmth, and the shared experience of context - of growing up in the same time and place.

Friends like this are gifts.

I was driving home after dropping him at his hotel tonight, and as I glanced in the mirror, I saw stuck on my face a silly grin. I realized it was the same grin that looked back at me countless times in my teens, and I was amazed at its buoyancy. I was amazed at the similar feelings of lightness and hope despite how many years have passed and how divergent our life paths have become. I always felt like my best self when I was with him, and tonight I discovered I still do.

visit to lalaland

I took a short trip this past weekend to lalaland to visit my lovely cousin. Sunny CA suits her. I like to visit and witness the sheen of Los Angeles, but it only took the bump and screech of the airplane's wheels on the Chi-town tarmac to remind me there's no place like home. We had fun, though, being together as grown-ups and laughing about when were kids.

Venice Beach. Talking to the street vendors and artists reaffirmed my desire to create - to follow a different path. I've never met a happier bunch of folks in my life.

Point Dume in Malibu, CA. Gorgeous.

Wheel pose. I couldn't visit the beach without doing a little yoga (I actually did very little and literally collapsed into giggles right after this picture was taken!)

"Don't Believe Everything You Think" bumper sticker...Embrace ambiguity.

Everywhere I turned was color: bright, beautiful flowers. This beauty reminded me of my Gram's rose garden. We missed her and honored her this weekend.

secrets

It's hard to write here when I'm holding onto secrets I can't share with the whole world. How many times in the past few weeks I've pulled up this site, started to write, and then erased every word I wrote. I just can't share yet. Not here. Not yet.

What I can share is my joy in this life that is mine - in the future I'm going to have with my daughter, friends, and family - and hopefully loads of new friends, acquaintances, and perhaps even new partners. My days have become filled with moment after moment of light and hope, and I am spending them doing what I love to do most: dreaming, planning, plotting, creating in full color. I have the most delicious vision. I do.

So, if my posts are sporadic in the next few weeks, just know it has to do more with necessary restraint than with early spring blues. I'd write about the state of the world or healthcare if I could,  but I just can't seem to keep my damn mind on anything but my dreams...and you know what? It feels fabulous.

beyond conservative v. liberal framework

I have a choice: I can be white—that is, I can refuse to challenge white supremacy or centrality—or I can be a human being. I can rest comfortably in the privileges that come with being white, or I can struggle to be fully human. But I can’t do both. Though the work is difficult, the choice for those of us who are white should be easy.

                                                                                    - Robert Jensen

Robert Jensen's article in YES! online is succinct and powerful. I, myself, am going to choose the struggle to be fully human. Read the rest of the article here.

The Left is Coming

Here is a great piece in Daily Kos about the US Social Forum this summer. As Cruz says, it is truly "an opportunity to work with other like-minded people and organizations who want to build a progressive, radical alternative to the economic and political systems currently enriching robber barons and making real change all but impossible." Read it. Come to Detroit this summer. Create real change.

Peeling

We change, don't we? People, I mean. Despite our best intentions  - and, at times Herculean efforts - to maintain stasis and control, sometimes we have no choice but to let go and simply be in our metamorphosis. We have no choice but to peel, layer by layer. We have no choice but to eventually face the mirror, wipe the steam away, and see ourselves in the reflection for who we really are - good and bad. And that might mean we've left those we've vowed never to leave. It might mean we've stopped trying, turned away from others we offered to love but who ultimately couldn't or wouldn't love us back. It might mean we've awakened suddenly lucid after slumbering in what felt like a foggy inertia. It might bring us pain - or ecstasy. Or both.

This thought above came to me today in Savasana. Still working on the intentions I set in class last week to let go of that which doesn't serve me and replace it with something better, I allowed my mind to wander while relaxing today. I think maybe I was testing it - seeing if the shift into the healthier space I felt last week after class was a fluke or not. It wasn't. As I lay there, heart pounding and dewy with sweat, and opened up to whatever washed over me, what I heard from some rusty region of my head or heart was this: we all change, and it's okay.

We change.

It's okay.

Deceptively simple words, aren't they? This past week, I've been awash in changing. I've felt the grip on old longings and expectations loosen and they have been replaced with an expanse of light and possibility and roominess. Before I fall asleep at night, I imagine walking into a room with a chalkboard. On it I write everything I'm holding inside that is unfulfilled until it is full of words and dreams and emotions. Then I take the eraser and erase everything. Every word. Every dream. Every unfulfilled emotion. And then, I visualize walking out of the room bathed in golden sunshine.

I am different, this person I've become. I may not be loving who I wanted to love. I may not be living in many of the ways I thought I'd be living. Sometimes it hurts, but sometimes it is delightful, too. And that's okay.

letting go

I've let it go. It being all of the "stuff" that has been dragging me down lately - all of the self judgments, doubts, aching nostalgia for situations that existed in my head rather than in reality. Something shifted inside of me last night - something elemental, visceral. I was at yoga, and before beginning our practice, our teacher had us set two intentions: 1) to let go of something that no longer served us well; and 2) to replace that space w/something better. He suggested we use the practice to work on letting go, and I was floored at the image that came to my mind of literally sweating out the emotions and people that have been clogging up my life. The purpose of yoga solidified for me in that moment, and as I moved through my asana, with each exhale and each bead of sweat, I let go.

Today has been infinitely better than the past few months. I've felt energized and excited about the future. For the first time in a long time, I didn't want to crawl into bed for a nap when I arrived home from work. Instead, I'm cooking, writing, and listening to music as my daughter impersonates the opera singer she met at her school today. We are happy and content.

I was worried last night I wouldn't be able to sustain this happy space, but if today is any indication, I can - and I will.

we are kind to snails

A friend of mine, a wise woman, is reading Good Poems for Hard Times and knowing it would make me smile and nod and sigh, she stuck this poem in my mailbox today.

For a Five-Year-Old by Fleur Adcock

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.

a moment

I know I need to write tonight, but I just don't have anything to put out there that is at all interesting or uplifting or thoughtful. I think I'm stuck in what I call "situational muck". It isn't as if nothing is happening. Things are happening. Lots of good stuff percolating, but despite it all I'm a bit sad tonight. So rather than spew sadness here, I'll instead leave you with a poem I read tonight titled Happiness by Raymond Carver. It's a glimpse into a moment so palpable we can taste it. I witnessed one the other morning as I watched a man with his child cross the street. He put his hand up to traffic and gently shepherded her across. The adoration I witnessed in that 15 second occurrence was as pure as anything I've ever seen.

Happiness by Raymond Carver

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

Perspectives of a Movement

Book Announcement

The United States Social Forum

Perspectives of a Movement

Edited by the USSF Book Committee:

Marina Karides, Walda Katz-Fishman, Rose M. Brewer,

Jerome Scott, and Alice Lovelace

This is a remarkable and full account of the first US Social Forum, held in Atlanta, Georgia in the summer of 2007. More than 12,000 people attended from across the U.S. and the world, taking part in workshops, plenaries and other gatherings. The book is both a history of the event and a how-to manual for organizing for the future.

Another World is Possible, Another US is Necessary!

Read the volume that captures the organizing process of the first US Social Forum, including strategies and reflections of the organizers, speakers, and participants that made the USSF a monumental event for grassroots organizing.

Order directly from the publisher:

http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker

Changemaker Publications

Softcover, 369 pages, $25

ISBN: 978-0-557-32373-9

that woman

I'm not sure I know how to have fun anymore, and I wonder if I've turned into that woman: super complicated with ridiculously impossible standards. A woman with a clamorous conscience and waning tolerance for casual encounters, social ignorance, and inflated egos. Or maybe I'm just cranky and tired of winter and need some damn sunshine. Some freedom. Some balance.

I want to go on a picnic. I want to spread out on a blanket of green grass or a beach of white sand. Lying there, I'd sip on a bottle of prosecco and feel the bubbles spark on my tongue and giggle like a child at the tickle of it. Unearthed from layers of winter, my bare shoulders would become pink with sun, my cheeks warm, my nose freckled. And beside me would lay a stack of poetry from Neruda or Whitman or Rilke. Or perhaps even someone reading Neruda to me (in Spanish. It is so much better in Spanish.). And for a few hours, desires outside of the now would cease. Expectations would be met. Intimacy with the world around me tangible. And I would have fun.

Sigh. Want to come?

Ted Sizer

I'm so late in writing about this, but I recently read on Deborah Meier's website that education-reform advocate and founder of the Essential Schools movement, Ted Sizer, died this past October. While I was in graduate school and encountering my first inklings of educational resistance, I hungrily inhaled anything written by Sizer. His position that schools should discard one-size-fits-all models of educating children seemed like basic common sense to me; I was always a bit surprised when someone critiqued him as "radical". I mean what is radical about collaboration, democracy, trust, and depth of understanding?

His death is an unmeasurable loss. I'll leave you with the inspiration of his words:

“Inspiration, hunger: these are the qualities that drive good schools. The best we educational planners can do is to create the most likely conditions for them to flourish, and then get out of their way.”

a feast

"On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us - ah! what a dream, to live in that! - the other stifles us at the first breath."
- Colette

Tonight, I choose to live the dream - a colorful world of good food, better friends, a safe home, love, delectable kisses from children, laughter with teenagers. Tonight, I'm feasting on it all.

landslide

I've been thinking an awful lot about landslides lately. And changing. And reflections. I heard this on my way to work this morning; it made me feel someone was listening. Enjoy it.




Stevie Nicks in Australia 2006

it's the fear

I lied a little, you know, in my last post. It does take a lot to make me happy - if a lot means truth, passion, risk, intellectual stimulation, friendship, laughter, love. I imagine those of you who know me well snorted a little when I wrote it doesn't take much to make me happy. Much indeed. I wish it were as easy as a damn Bird of Paradise.

Lately, letting go is excruciatingly hard. Just when I think I’m fully facing forward something shifts in my atmosphere, and I’m hovering again in the past. It isn’t just the guilt from drastically altering two lives in ways they’d rather not have altered – although there is that. It isn’t even the awareness of awaking alone most mornings this past year – although there is that, too. It isn’t doubt or financial ruin or residual anger or disappointment or self-judgment– I mean the fallout from those certainly nest inside but isn’t causing this latest strain. I think maybe it is the fear. Fear of being wrong again. And fear that I’ll have dragged myself and my ex and our little one through this massive, painful change only to have our lives different but not necessarily better. What if mine is the only one better? What then?

I want to believe that divorce doesn’t invalidate a decade’s worth of choices – of feelings and declarations and struggles that might have been fruitless but were waged nonetheless. I’d like to be able to believe I can move forward with lightness provided from my past rather than this heaviness that is sitting on me now. I’d like to believe I won’t repeat the same mistakes, but right now – today – I am uncertain, and the limitless future that usually excites is instead looming large. Scarily large.

they make me happy

www.flickr.com

It really doesn't take much to make me happy, and since I've been sick (hence the silence this past week), I figured a picture of my favorite flower couldn't hurt - and maybe it would make you happy, too!

the girl inside

Some days I feel more divorced than others. Some days I feel so much like a mother first and a sexy woman last that it takes everything I have in me not to succumb to a self-indulgent crawl beneath my sheets and disappear forever. And on days like that, I do two things: I welcome my warrior poses, and I pull out the poetry. This one by Lucille Clifton is rather fitting.


There is a girl inside

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

-Lucille Clifton

tribute to Zinn at Busboys and Poets 2/15/10

Here is wonderful coverage of the memorial to Howard Zinn held at Busboys and Poets yesterday.

I miss knowing he is in the world.

she'll understand

Someday, when she once again asks "why?", I'll be able to show my daughter this poem, and she will understand:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

protecting the circle

I saw a link today on Racialicious to a collection of writings by Canadian men titled Protecting the Circle: Aboriginal Men Ending Violence Against Women. It's uplifting - and necessary - to have men commit to ending violence against women. The organizations who put the collection together have invited people to share. You can read it here.

this too shall pass

Sometimes there are nights (like tonight) after long days and tears and tantrums when instead of hot tea and irreverent literature, I'd like to spend time with an actual adult who can hold me and whom I can hold. Someone who can either make me laugh or let me cry, or if I can do neither will maybe just lie next to me so I can feel his heat. But out of my available options, there just isn't anyone good enough, so I am going to close my eyes and stuff my dream box with the words this too shall pass.

security

“Security isn’t what I hunger for. I hunger for change. I hunger for connection. I hunger for good sex.”

Last month, Deborah Solomon published a Q&A with Eve Ensler in the New York Times Magazine. For the record: I think Eve is brilliant. The Vagina Monologues was amazing, and I am sure her new book, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World will be equally spectacular. I can’t wait to read it. What struck me the most about the Q&A, however, was her quote above, which is a powerfully concise example of what I think many of us are feeling but can’t necessarily articulate.

I know I’m not looking for what our society considers security (perhaps if security were defined as infallible human rights…but it isn’t in most contexts, and for the sake of this post, let’s define it differently): freedom from danger, risk, or anxiety. I have no judgment for people who are, but my question is this: if danger, risk, and anxiety are dichotomous – and I think they are – what happens to the other aspects we can’t always see? Because I know for me the hidden element in danger is exhilaration. In risk, it is the possibility. In anxiety, the catalyst. Without those, I’m not sure I’d be alive - or much use to anyone else let alone to myself. If those are absent and what is left is called security, well, no thanks.

Change. Connection.

My daughter and I share a house with my best friend and her teenage daughters. One of them is fifteen - an age that is also dichotomous. An age when what lies ahead are endless chances to change the world yet also filled with angst from just as many absent connections. It's an age when taking the risks necessary to follow dreams means exposing oneself without the safety net and perspective of maturity and experience. And for many young women like my friend's daughter, it is a time of freedom but one with much isolation and few allies. As I observe her struggling to develop an identity, to define her wants and needs, and to set her personal limits, I'm frequently reminded that for anyone for whom developing a consciousness matters, the process is universal and cyclical. The questions she asks at fifteen are the same I ask over and over at thirty-four and the same ones my friends in their sixties still ponder. And yes, it might be risky to ask them. Yes, the answers at one stage may come easily only to prove painfully inadequate at another. Yes, at times, we may find ourselves without them - without even hope we'll ever know them or imagine knowing them again. But what does a life look like without them? Safe? Serene? Still? Empty... Shallow...

For me, I can't do it. As uncomfortably complicated as my world is when I question and challenge and push to make things different, it isn't shallow. If anything, the depth taunts me. It threatens to drown me when I get tired of trying to stay afloat. But perhaps drowning in it isn't as dangerous as it is scary - isn't as detrimental as it is unfamiliar. Perhaps surrendering to the process could bring ease or respite. Isn't it that ease that loosens everything just enough to allow in a connection? To welcome change?

Security? No, thanks. I hunger for more.

What about you?

leaving behind

A sense that there is something you forgot, something missing that used to make you happy and has somehow been left behind. That often happens when you move on to the latest promises and developments and inadvertently leave the reasons you used to have fun in cold storage.

This is the beginning of my horoscope today, and oh how true it is. Even in the thick of the exciting possibilities surrounding me, a slight unease invades and that inescapable grief lurks in the background. Even while meeting new people - people who might someday be important to me - I feel an emptiness at a fundamental level.

Moving on to new promises and opportunities is beautiful. It is the only way to move forward, to seek a new life. It is cleansing and vibrant and fresh - much like a bracing breath of outside air after leaving a hospital sickroom. But in order for something to cleanse, something or someone - or someones - must be left behind. And it is the leaving behind that stings.

crystallizing

After meeting w/Chicago community organizers today in a brainstorming session for the US Social Forum in Detroit this summer, I'm left with the spoken word of resistance, the community of revolution. Everything I'm hearing is poetry: global, collective consciousness convergence, active analysis, movement, justice.
 
I feel like I'm home, and I know why I'm here - in Chicago - now.

It's beautiful.

Get involved. Wherever you are.

because

it's grey, snowing, and cold as hell outside, and I need a reminder that springtime and sunshine aren't going to desert us:

filled up

I fell madly in love with the twenty 6-8 year olds I taught in hip-hop yoga tonight. The implicit, immediate trust they laid at my feet left me breathless. Their joy in movement, their ability to embrace every second I gave them with pure, honest love leaves me wondering when does all that makes us whole as a child leave us? At precisely what point in our children's lives do the absences and inequities begin to splinter their existence? And if we know moments like today exist all day in different schools all over the world, why can't we provide? Why can't we stop labeling "special needs" and "at-risk" and "under-performing" and just capture the potential they exude out of every pore in their little bodies. Why can't we stop blaming the parents and the neighborhoods and the communities cradling those neighborhoods and instead take collective responsibility for our children? They are there. They are here. waiting for us.

disequilibrium

It's happened again. And my insides are shifting and tumbling over themselves trying to make sense of it. The problem with intellectual growth is the disequilibrium that makes you question everything you've done, everything you've been till now. Someone once used the metaphor of a underground garage: just when you think you can see the bottom, you discover another level.

I'm there.

I went to a conference a few months ago and attended a session facilitated by the author of the blog Race Has Nothing to do with You, a brilliant academic with the voice of a poet. Only another accustomed to wandering alone in this educational desert we've created could fathom the joy in finding a companion somewhere along the journey. And even though I don't know him personally, I am quite intimate with his anger, the derision, the sadness, the hope, the urge to get it all out there in poetry or prose, the danger, the desire.

It's bubbling, my mind. My heart, it's bleeding. I'm thinking about how one stays without staying the same. how one leaves without retreating. how one helps when every inauthentic voice tries to smother the flames of hope. how one lends space for creation instead of reiteration. how one loves through loss. how one learns through trauma. I'm thinking about my students and my child and me. I'm thinking about connection and recognition and value and hope and wondering how it all fits together - how it can't fit together in isolation, and how I don't want to be in isolation anymore.

a dream

I want to go here.

americans who tell the truth

One of my favorite (and recently rediscovered) websites/projects is Americans Who Tell the Truth. The project includes collections of portraits, quotes, and a traveling exhibit. The website includes a curriculum and education blog. Seriously - the lessongasms I had after reading them were quite intense.

Someday I hope to have a personal library/study with overstuffed chairs bathed in sunlight streaming through tall windows. On the walls will be portraits of these amazing people - and some blank spaces for those who come next.

Howard Zinn

The news that Howard Zinn died today saddens me beyond belief. Yes, he was 87, but he wasn't finished. His teaching was/is never finished. I just saw him a few months ago, and he was sharp and alive and smart...god, he was smart. I'll treasure the memory of sitting in the balcony overlooking him on the stage below...in the limelight, for sure, but seeking no power, no accolades. Interested only in the stories - of the people.

Here is the link to the article in the NY Times.

Update:

Here are a few more links of folks paying tribute to Zinn:

Socialist Worker
The Free Press
Democracy Now

These words (also quoted in Socialist Worker's tribute) are particularly meaningful to me as we struggle to determine our course in the face of such national and global destruction. We could always look to Zinn for inspiration - for tips on how to maintain hope and persevere through the darkness. We still can with these words:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of the world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

a writer's heart is always breaking

Writer Alice Walker recently wrote this on her blog:

A writer’s heart, a poet’s heart, an artist’s heart, a musician’s heart, is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world; more mysterious, beloved, insane and precious for the sparkling and jagged edges of the smaller enclosure we have escaped.

 It speaks to me. You?

a break from wading

My fairly new laptop crashed, and as such my blogging time has been sliced to pieces. Here are a few things I'm doing while I'm temporarily unplugged:

1. Reading Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. So timely. And, it is making me relish the warmth (and innate goodness) of the human spirit - of our collective human spirit.

2. Cultivating as much joy as I can. Through yoga. In motherhood. In friendship. Lately, I'm trying to feel the sun rather than the dampness of the clouds. The sun is so much more powerful.

3. Making plans. Surprised, I'm sure. Not. The future is mine. It is all mine. It does not depend on a man - or on my relationship with a man - or on money or even circumstance. I am taking back my future, and I won't take no for an answer.

4. Liking and learning from myself. I have a lot to offer the people in my life. I am open to receiving what others have to give. For the first time in a long time, I am not stymied by my idealism and seeing only what I want to see but instead motivated by reality. It is sometimes murky on the surface, but the clarity once I wade through is astounding. I've been wading. Now I'm taking a break to just be in it.

Happy Friday, people. I hope you, too, have waded through the murk and can enjoy your peace.

we need a new sense of self

I just discovered Drew Dellinger and planetize the movement, and all I have to say initially is wow.

Here is a short clip titled A New Sense of Identity.

Thoughts?

Oh - he has a blog, too.

anew

Single moms. This past year, I've commented on their blogs, read their stories, and rallied around their causes all without feeling like one. From my insulated perch, I murmured in solidarity when someone broke their heart. I nodded at their tales of financial strain. I imaginary high-fived them on the rare days when everything, from parenting to dating to career, fell into place. But if I were urged to choose a group to join - an identity to own - the single mama moniker would not necessarily be the first one that entered my mind. Until maybe now.

I wonder if one cannot truly be a member of the single mama posse until her heart is ...well, shattered. Until the pieces that started splitting into fragments when that dream first died- whatever the dream might have been - become so broken themselves that all that remains is dust. I wonder if perhaps, for me, my heart splintered only partially when I was divorced last year, and over the course of this last year - through loss after loss -  it has finally cracked completely. And while that may sound alarming to one reading this, it needn't, because my hope now that I have little left is to (finally) build anew.

It was while I was on my little writing retreat (where I accomplished little writing) a few weeks ago that I crashed. For two days, battling high and chilly winds, I sat wrapped in a blanket and stared at the sea through a curtain of salty tears. In utter solitude, I sobbed with grief. Grief over the chasm between me and my big brother, and as an extension, my sweet little niece, for losing my uncle to cancer much too early, and over a man who turned out to be a sliver of a shadow of the man my idealism had created. And yes, daunting grief over being on my own. Alone with my daughter. Daunting grief indeed.

I left Florida wrung out - feeling physically waifish and emotionally depleted. I boarded the plane slowly but without looking back; honoring and releasing that which caused such distress was grueling, but ultimately it had to be less painful than harboring hope for something different - than believing in something or someone that doesn't exist. Acute pain rather than chronic destruction.

And now, here I am, back home waiting for the spring. And the sun. Hoping that out of all of the tears that fell, maybe a few are feeding new growth, building anew.

(stock photography from Dreamstime)

skinless

"You were skinless. There was nothing between you and the world - you let everything in and you let everything show."

from, The World Before Her by Deborah Weisgall

Sometimes I feel skinless. It's exhausting. And exhilarating. And everything in between. 

recess

I'm here for a little cottage-sitting, dog-watching while writing long weekend. Away from the freezing temperatures and blanket of snow covering the Midwest, I am instead submerged in sunshine with a sparkling ocean steps away. It feels decadent and naughty, and I intend to enjoy it.

Every.single.minute.

I have some writing I need to do: non-blog, people-may-actually-pay-for-it- writing (how exciting is THAT?!). So, I'll see you in a few days.

Here's to a sunny start of the year for you, too.

Noam Chomsky on Gaza

Democracy Now's video of Noam Chomsky " Gaza: One Year Later" is here. Disturbing doesn't even begin to describe it.

It worries me to think of the world without intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Who will take their places when they are gone? Perhaps these foks? Or her? Other ideas, people?

worth it

I'm visiting my family this week in my hometown. Everywhere I go are reminders of the life I've left behind. And while they aren't as fresh as they once were, they are here causing me to pause more than I expected. Being here- being with my siblings and my friends- has me thinking about trajectories and fate and choice. It has me thinking about why some people make choices that work and others make the same choices with drastically different results. It has me wondering why the life I chose a decade ago didn't work for me, yet it works so well for them. It has me asking if I'll ever be able to have a simple homecoming without the baggage of the past, or if returning will always be a reflection of the path I traveled only to stop midway facing the wrong direction.

One day, I'd like a simple homecoming.

My daughter, though, is smiling. She is giggling and playing with her cousins and has loosened her grip on my sleeve for a few days.  And her happiness - her obvious gleeful settling into the arms of our family who loves us and welcomes us is worth all of the thinking. It's worth all of the questioning.

long cab ride home

I find it both ironic and typical that after an evening out drinking and schmoozing at bars, the most enlightening conversation I had was with the cab driver on the way home. A youngish man who moved here from Egypt to attend college twenty years ago, he drives a cab when he isn't working...as a mechanical engineer consultant. He brought his sick mother to the United States and has devoted his life to her. "She worked three jobs to support my brother and me", he said. "She was a home economics teacher, a tailor, and she trained young women how to sew. I remember waking up at 3 a.m. and she would have the dining room table full of buttons and would be sewing small detail onto cloth. I brought her here because it is my turn to take care of her".

Later (it is a long drive) , we talked about how so many have so much and even more have so little. He chuckled and said, "you know, sometimes I felt more free in Egypt, but some parts aren't that different. Chicago has snow; Egypt has sand. It is all a game." When I commented that we would probably find very few American-born mechanical engineers moonlighting as cab drivers, he chuckled again and said, "eh - perhaps they are lazy? hahaha". Yes, sir, indeed. We are most definitely lazy.

shining in the darkness

A few bloggers I follow (Maria Niles, Rita Arens, and Blondie) have each posted lists of five things they meant to do in 2009. They inspired me to do the same, but instead of focusing on what I didn't do (because really, let's be honest: it could fill a year's worth of posts), I'm going to concentrate on five things I did in 2009. It was a rough year, but because so much of it was spent in darkness, the shining moments were all the brighter.


1. I demolished one home and built another.

Ok. Demolishing sounds harsh, but divorce is essentially just that. It's knocking down a termite-ridden structure and from the wreckage building something stronger and more sustainable. I've done that. Together with my good friend who has also been going through a divorce, we've swept away the splinters and the mess and joined households to create a new, different kind of home for our three girls. A home where at any given moment it is okay to feel whatever we are feeling.  A home where there are people to cry with if we need to cry or dance with if we need to dance (or drink with if we need to drink). A home where the children - and their mothers - are loved for who they are and what they offer the world, and where they are told they are loved...over and over and over again until they believe it. It's a refuge against the cold. An anchor in choppy waters. It's a home.

2. I made my physical and emotional health a priority.

I recently wrote about yoga and how it saved me from the brink of insanity. Making my health a priority was as much for me as it was for my daughter. This past year especially, I needed to have enough energy to be present for her - to raise her the way I want to raise her. I also needed to feel that something about me wasn't a failure. If I looked and felt sexy, centered and energetic, I had a natural armor against some of the unhappiness that pervaded my life. Now that I'm on more stable ground, I am even more committed to continuing my practice of yoga and eating more healthfully. I'm hoping this next year I can deepen the commitment even more.

3. I created options for the future.

Some days I know I was born to work with teenagers, and I sit in my office in my current school after talking with them and can't imagine doing anything else. Other days, I strain against the confines of the structure of our educational system, and I want to run...to anywhere but schools in a country that rewards wealth and power, test scores and "data" rather than honoring community, culture, and learning. I sheepishly admit my school is a haven from much of this, but only for 200 girls. There are hundreds of thousands of others who aren't so lucky, and there are days when attempting to change the system for them -for all of us - is mired in quicksand. 

I've used this year to think about what I want from my career. From my life. And honestly, I still don't know - especially when I weigh in reality vs. idealism. Images run through my mind, though - beautiful images of freedom and flexibility, of awaking in the morning energized by the projects awaiting me. Pictures of leisurely morning walks with my daughter to her school, of reading and writing in coffee shops and sun-filled libraries. Images of creating.

We'll see what happens, but this spring I'll know what the next school year brings. I've created options for myself - options I can't discuss in detail here - and whichever I end up embracing could make this time next year look very different. And I'm excited. It's been a long time since the open road was winding for me.

4. I fell in love again with my daughter.

She sleeps, and my eyes travel over her. Her eyelashes are long and dark against the paleness of her upper cheeks; the roundness of her face curves into her naturally ruby lips. When I brush the hair back that has fallen across her forehead, she stirs and snuggles deeper into her blankets, her fingers clutching her green stuffed monkey close.  My chest is so full it hurts. I have to physically hold back from squeezing her too tightly. I recognize her yet I don't. This little one - suspended still between my baby and a girl - is no longer mine. She belongs to the world and to herself, and her desires and needs and future will be filled with people, places, and experiences that are of her life, not mine. She came from me only to leave me - as all children do.

In the chaos that is now life as a single parent, one can get lost in the rush - in the sprint of a typical day. The hours cycle from morning drop-off to evening pick-up to dinner to bath to books to bedtime, and then it starts all over again. It's too easy - much too easy - to lose sight of my daughter's transformation from dependent to self-reliant. Sometimes the fatigue - so great some nights I fall asleep lying next to her before she does - shades the good stuff. When I was so miserably unhappy all I wished for was a way out, I forgot to look at her. I didn't hold her as closely as I should have. I didn't enjoy her as I could have. But being on our own has made me a better parent. In the midst of the whirlwind of raising a five year old, I've learned I must stop, breathe, and look at her. Be with her. And I've fallen in love all over again with this smart, funny, sassy, and kind (above all else, she is kind) little girl of whom I am so proud.

5. I learned I don't want a partnership without intimacy and authenticity.

My marriage eventually held neither - for me, anyway. It was companionable, comfortable. But I felt no desire to expose myself. To challenge myself. And a life without exposure and challenge is not one I want to live. So this past year, first through a divorce and then through confusing and complicated feelings in a situation fleeting yet important in its lessons,  I've learned essentially I want it all. I want a partner with whom I can talk and feel heard. I want a partner with whom I can cry and who can cry with me. I need  a partner intelligent enough to challenge me with piercing questions - and one who will appreciate my responses. A partner who sees me. I need to connect in the head and heart as strongly as I connect to the the butterflies his presence creates. And lastly (and this is a big one), I need a partner who wants me -and my child- enough to stand up regardless of his own fears and vulnerabilities. To trust us. To show up for us. Over and over again. I don't know when it will happen or with whom, but I think I can say I'll finally be able to recognize it when it does.

And those, my friends, are just a few things I did in 2009. How about you?

dreaming

A good friend brought me a dream box from her trip to New Mexico. It is a small, round box in which I'm to place a written wish or desire or something on which I need resolution. I'm to hold it in my hands before bed, think about what I've written, and the energy is supposed to mix in my dreams and help make it possible.

I love it. I love the smallness that encompasses the largest of cravings. I love the smooth wood that slides between my fingers when I rub it like a worry stone. I love the idea that there is something out there paying attention.

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I can't stop dreaming about a friend who is no longer in my life. Colorful dreams full of aches and tenderness and twists and fullness. Dreams that, upon awaking, muddle and hurt in their aftermath. These aren't cauterizing dreams. And the friend whom I call a friend for lack of a better definition - even though he really isn't a friend, hasn't acted like a friend. What do you call someone who has a piece of you whether he wants it or not? Who, even after your efforts to physically disconnect you can't emotionally sever? Maybe what I call the attempt to shift from lovers to...something else was never really friendship at all. Maybe instead it was me denying the signs I wasn't ready to see. Maybe instead it was me acquiescing to hope, despite what it lacked.  Denying signs that extinguish hope; perhaps, I couldn't have survived another round of extinguished hope.

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But now what? Do dreams have an expiration date? Or is this my dream box working through its magic but telling me the journey isn't pain-free? It isn't all easy wishing before bed and waking up the next morning with that life you hoped for sitting pretty on your pillow tied up with a bright, red satin bow.

broken until

For a while a little over a year ago, I was broken inside. Mangled. I couldn't envision being whole again; I didn't even know what it meant to be whole again. It was the beginning to the legal end of my marriage, and I was unhappy, overweight, and certainly overwrought. I was grasping for something to ground me.

And then I found yoga.

My life changed. All the moving fragments I floated through in the course of a day seemed to diverge into stillness when I practiced. For 90 minutes 3-4x/week, I became someone else - a someone else I liked. And slowly, through continued practice I've changed. My life has changed.

My  body has changed, too. I can't thank yoga alone for losing forty pounds, but it certainly helped. And it has helped me maintain the weight loss because once I started practicing, I naturally began paying close attention to what I was using to fuel my body. I started eating more grains and less refined carbohydrates. I began to love root vegetables and spinach and squash - all foods I could tolerate before but never ones I could declare loving. I drank more tea and less coffee. I pretty much gave up bagels and muffins for breakfast and instead boiled eggs. And I ate only when I was hungry. This, in particular, was new for me. I've always been an emotional eater, but my first instinct when stressed was no longer to eat - it was to breathe.

After several years of high cholesterol, I recently had a physical, and for the first time in years, I am a healthy weight. I have normal cholesterol levels. And it feels damn good. And honestly, I feel pretty damn good in my body. Certainly, a part of me would like to have the trim, smooth tummy I had before I had my daughter. No matter how many muscles I build in my core, there will always be the mommy marks and slight rounding. And having just celebrated another birthday this weekend, I have to admit I have my moments of fantasizing about having my 24 year old physique back. But most of the time, I recognize the ridiculousness of that time-sink. I am a mother after all, and there is beauty and immense strength in that, too. And the fact that I can now contort my body in positions I could never do - at 14 or 24 - more than makes up for it!

Discovering yoga has helped me become a more patient person. Having goals and reaching them are two very different things. I never took the time to mull over the difference before. I would set a goal and immediately consider myself a failure if I didn't reach it right away. Moving through my asana, I have no choice but to set goals and gradually work towards achieving them. My body simply won't bend a certain way on will alone. Last night in class, I balanced in crane and popped into a headstand, and I stayed in both longer than I ever have. My handstand, though, wasn't working. I couldn't kick up securely, and eventually I had to stop trying. A year ago, I would have been disgusted with my body's limitations, but instead I rejoiced in its capabilities.

Yoga has given me another outlet for my relentless thoughts. I can't stop thinking. I need to know the why, the who, the what...always. It can be draining. Saddening. Maddening. I imagine for those with whom I share my thoughts, it is rather exhausting at times to listen without always having the answers I seek (lucky for me they stick around anyway). My blog used to be my only outlet, and then I lost my words. Yoga took over; it cleansed me, cleared the cobwebs. And with the familiarity of a long-time lover, I know my body - and my mind - better than I know anything.

I'm sure yoga isn't for everyone, but it saved me. The studio is the one place I feel the sense of belonging that has been missing for so many years. Stretching my body - testing my strength-  is a physical metaphor for all the other moments when I'm in the struggle with reality...except reality isn't quite as much of a struggle anymore.

Namaste.

recognition

I saw this today online, and something in it made me all achy and breathless with recognition.

A taste of it is below, but here is a link to the full poem:

without context

some days it seems many
lifetimes have passed since
you held firm to my hand
whispering secrets in my ear.
days flow by, like sands

-Leonie

swirling, whirling thoughts and hope

I'm on a writing deadline and absolutely should not be writing on my blog right now. Bad, bad girl. I have so much on my mind, though, and I feel like I've turned the corner into so many critical moments lately. And honestly, my writing process has been so much more grueling since I took a break this past year that I don't feel I have the same luxury to ignore the flashing light that reads "WRITE! WRITE!"; it just doesn't show up as insistently anymore.

So here I am trying to process it all. Trying to stop the whirling of it all so it slows down enough to communicate here.

I whirled my way to a yoga class tonight seeking the stillness only the practice can provide for me. A year ago, I went to class three or four times a week, and now I'm lucky if I make it twice a week. I try to practice at home, but it's difficult to carve out time and space. So I was looking forward to tonight.  And while my body might not have been as strong as I wanted it to be in certain poses, I relaxed enough to let go, and finally in shavasana, the final relaxation pose, I realized how unkind I've been to myself - how willing I've been to believe the doubts that whisper to me in my weak moments and how callous I've been in denying myself those that counter them. And I did something I haven't done during class for a long time: I cried. The tears pooled beneath my closed eyelids and rolled down my cheeks. I didn't rush to wipe them away or hide them. I welcomed them. With every deep breath, I willed more to appear - opening myself as they cleansed. When class was over, my mat was wet. I felt a bit battered, but I also felt purified.

There are some other conclusions at which I've arrived lately:

 1. Friendship for me - real friendship - can't be transient. It can't be based on convenience. And like a marriage, it takes work. And mutual honesty. And mutual respect. In order for me to share my life with someone I consider a friend, that someone needs to communicate he/she wants me to share in his/her life, too. I see friendship as much - if not more - intimate than a romantic relationship. It is what is left when the layers of  romance are peeled away - if they peel away.  To say I'm here. I'm your person, no matter what happens takes a commitment. It takes intimacy. I realized I don't take this commitment lightly, and a friendship without intimacy is about as interesting to me as attending the Republican National Convention or swimming in Lake Michigan in January - one can stop breathing from emotional hypothermia, too.

2. I have work to do in the classroom. In order to be the kind of teacher I want to be - a teacher in solidarity with my students and one who encourages resistance and critical analysis of our world - I need to plan better. I need to create space in a different way than I've been creating it. Hell, it shouldn't be mine to create at all; it should be a collaborative, democratic effort. I want to be that teacher. I want to inspire because everyday I'm inspired by my students.

3. I have two plans for the future: two different, bold visions. And like my sweet, wonderful friend, Adele, told me, I hope the plan that is wrong for me is removed from my path somehow so I don't have to make the wrong choice. I'm ready to embrace the right ones.

Back to my deadline now.  And then a rest filled with hope and energy. I think it's gonna be a mighty good winter.