#LoveMatters...

Yesterday the weather dawned generous and balmy for these coastal Northern California-ites.  To the unitiated, that translates to a scorching 81 degrees.  To celebrate this little localized act of global warming, we took the dog and the 3-year-old and the massive SUP board we got at Costco this past Christmas, and weaved a motley trail down to the happy little nudist beach down the road.  We sat in our swimsuits and drank beer and took turns building sand castles and finding our sea legs out on the giant, shimmery blue.  On the way down, as we were gathering our earthly clutter, my partner turns to me and says, “So.  How does it feel to be married for 9 years?”  Enter….crickets.   Keep in mind at this moment, that I am a woman of reasonable intelligence.  I possess no known disorders of the mind or chromosomes which would render it difficult for me to pick up on normal social cues or customs.  I have known the man speaking to me for all of my adult life.  I have made a baby with him, signed on for a mortgage with him, travelled the world at his side.  He at mine.  And yet.  This question of marriage.  And how does it feel?  I know there is only one appropriate response to the loaded gun of a thing such as this.  “Mah-velous, Lover.  Each day with you is better than the last!”  And yet I hesitate.  I stutter.  Lord help me, I cringe.  

Years ago, when we were first wed, I was finishing up my last year of college.  With a completely amorphos degree in the Performing Arts, I was gifted the task to craft a final project which would demonstrate the accumulation of my skills and knowledge over the past four, ahem, six years.   I penned a one-woman show entitled “Finding My Feet”, which amounted to little more than me prancing about the stage for roughly 45 minutes, in various degrees of undress, wondering aloud for my assembled friends and acquaintances, just where my 25-year-old life had gone off track.  For the first 20 minutes of said piece, I bemoaned my fate as a young girl in love, now gone and rendered that precious thing moot by attaching the ole ball and chain to it.  “No longer the blushing bride,” I lamented beneath the bright stage lights, “but a Wife.  Making cookies and babies. …  No more doling out free milk samples cuz I’d gone and sold the damn cow.”  I waltzed around solo inside a terry-cloth bathrobe reciting my self-penned rant.  Peggy Lee’s “Is that all there is?” accompanied me softly in the background.  

Then, as now, the notion of marriage is strange to me.  In theory, I get it.  I like it even.  This beautiful idea of commiting your life to another (forsaking all others), and doing your damndest to carve out something that has beauty and meaning and heart and verve to it.  To plunking down some roots so that you may watch a thing grow.  To creating a container that is sold, depenable and sturdy between your two hodge-podge souls, so that when Life’s inevitable storms come your way, you can row in tandem, trusting that what you’ve built is buoyant, seaworthy.  But unlike the poetic metaphorical world upon which vows are written, flowers, dresses and quadruple-tiered cakes are bought and put on display, the inside work of this institution is slippery, and fraught.  

I was my parent’s prodigal child.  After reading my journal for the umpteenth time, and declaring her findings of my teenage life ungodly and thereby unacceptable, she put down the ultimatimatum.  Change or leave.  So, at 16, I packed a bag and thumbed it down the road.  At 17, I rode the coattails of another friend up to the Northernmost end of California, and rented my first little one-room apartment, in the shadow of the chilled Pacific and the ancient trees, where I’ve called home ever since.  At 18, I shaved my head and hopped inside my two-door, blue, used Tercel to venture on up the road to a disco party that was being hosted by a co-worker.  I intended to dance, chain smoke, laugh loudly and drink too much, in no specific order.  Maybe make out with some random someone at one point along the way.  And then there was this guy:  brown-eyed, and deeply-tanned, sporting a long, blonde ponytail and holding court around the bonfire outside.  Earthy and simple.  With the craziest, strong, gnarled hands I’d ever seen before.  Not at all my type.  Six years later, I married him.

Again, from that little show about my poor, rambling Feet : “In one fell swoop, I’d managed to raise my family status from resident blacksheep to hallowed golden child.  They could crown me Mary-fucking Poppins!  But by embracing one age-old, convention, had I unwittingly signed on for the whole damn package?  Like one big, cosmic bluelight special?  ‘Attention, KMart shoppers!  Marriage, children and a lifetime of mediocrity on sale now - aisle 5!’”

It’s a question that some days haunts me still.

The ancient yogis have a way of describing the ruts we carve for ourselves, both in life and inside the swirling vicissitudes of the mind.  Samskara is a word used to describe our habits, our grooves that we unwittingly settle into.  Like the needle idling on an old record, stuck, inside the same damn riff of a song you’ve heard over and over. The more it plays, the deeper the rut is carved, making it harder to venture into the landscape of a different song, a different set of sounds and verses, lines and notes, a world beyond this spinning sound.  Just as it is hard to break a habit - obsessive thoughts, swearing, smoking cigarettes, or wearing flip-flops and yoga pants every damn day - the habit of marriage is a tough one to break.  

After the initial fanfare of cake and pageantry and love songs and toasting has subsided.  After the gorgeous, $60,000 weekend-long Parade of Us-ness has sauntered through town, most often the float’s replaced by a beat-up Chevy or a used stationwagon.  And we plop ourselves unwittingly behind the wheel of a vehicle we never intended to inhabit - vowing somehow, this time, to take a different route than our predecessors.  Avoid the main highways and chart a path through the wilderness.  Arrive at a different destination than those who settled themselves into the great bucket seats of matrimony before us.  And yet, too often, we find the damn car’s got a mind of its’ own, a weather-beaten, hackneyed GPS that’s wired to loop around in circles, looking for the nearest Exit, the tires are not thick enough to range out beyond the small confine of well-worn interstate.  We thought we’d been granted the keys to lifelong happiness and sunshine, mutual orgasms and holding hands sedately into that great, long march into Oblivion.  But is the car we’re driving the one we want?

All this to say:  Perhaps we’re asking the wrong damn questions.  “How does it feel to be married?”  Well, shit.  It’s tiresome and boring sometimes.  It makes me feel grumpy and old.  Like I’m wearing a shirt that wasn’t made for me.  At times, I feel complacent and resentful of the expectations that come along with this role.  How I perceive others expect me to behave as a Wife, Mother, Homeowner, Taxpayer, hell, even what a Grown-up should be.  Under the weight of these nebulous expectations, I fail miserably most of the time.  The dishes piled in the sink.  The dinner sprung from a can or another round of take-out, the fourth this week.  The sex we haven’t had for weeks on end.  The time we spend talking about money and house-stuff and work-stuff and schedule-stuff and kid-stuff and general, mind-numbing stuff-stuff.  At times I feel too full, and empty inside that same breath.  It’s amazing how the things that come with amassing a certain quality of life, can drain the Life right out of ya’.  

This week, as I scroll through my personal pocket of news and information, there’s a dentist catching hell for his general douche-baggery and a failure to realize that #LionLivesMatter.  The pro-lifers in my sphere are up in arms that we would get our panties so up in a twist over a damn cat when it’s so blindingly obvious that only #UnbornBabiesLivesMatter.  Folks on the trail of the Democratic Primary are catching heat for implying that #AllLivesMatter, taking attention away from the #BlackLivesMatter struggle and campaign. Transgender Daddies are requesting that I stop asking such questions about their anatomy and sex lives, and turn my attention to the pictures of the two smiling kiddos by their side.   And Donald Trump and his assanine lawyer are taking offense that you or I would deign to call the tearing of hair from his wife’s scalp and shoving an unwanted dick between her legs an act of Rape, and not just good ole, marital fun.  And maybe you are scratching your head right now, gentle reader, wondering just where this rambling train is headed and how dare I compare my own humdrum struggles to the larger pain and battles that are being fought on the larger playing field right now?  Indeed.  

What I want to make a case for now is perhaps, as much as our legal system and our ever-more-partisan society at large seems to crave them, I’d like to propose, however briefly and humbly, that possibly: #TheseLabelsDoNotMatter.  How does it feel to be a person of color in a world which systematically favors only the color white?  Dear friend, I do not know.  And I look to you to help me understand.  How does it feel to be trapped inside a body which does not reflect the truth imprinted in your Soul?  Illumine me.  Write me a letter.  Paint me a picture.  Show us all what’s up.  How does it feel to have someone you trust brutalize your body and then walk away unscathed?  These are questions whose answers may only be grappled with by those who know, who have lived it, and who are brave enough to share their stories aloud.

How does it feel to be married?  Meh.  Some days golden, some days not.  It is a vexing and venerable institution, one which I am often tempted to renege on and find some other way.  “How does it feel to love?”  you might better ask. To be a sentient, sacred being temporarily encased inside a pulsing, impermanent mound of flesh and synapse?  To know that, in the end, this body, whatever color, shape, size or form it may assume is only the vehicle through which all of Life must express itself into the world?  To attempt to carve out a piece of something Sublime and Whole using mere tools of clay and bone?  Oh.  Well, that feels very good indeed.

It feels good to walk some long portion of the road with you and hear your thoughts along the way.  To sit and ponder on the Big Ideas, and let the dishes stack an inch deeper in the sink.  To know tenderness, pain, beauty, sweetness, bitter, the in betweens.  To cum to you.  Argue with you.  Adventure and dream and slog through shit with you.  These things are very real and good.  And if you need to affix a label to this mess of Gorgeous, hallowed, mundane stuff, fine.  Slap a ring on it and call me Wife.  And if small, census-oriented-data is all you crave, there are many fine and concise labels I could attach to the world which I inhabit, a small smattering of colors I could use to try and paint the vast rainbow of experience which I’ve been handed.  But you would miss those shades of vast Amazing-ness, my limited palette of words cannot describe.  In the end, we know, #LoveMatters - and the way we choose to employ it, with whatever tools we’ve been handed.

for the times in which i cannot see your face...

~ i must see your likeness transposed by that of an angel.

i must take your earthy dark features

& imbue them with a shroud

of Light.

feathering your hair

and surrounding your body.

infusing the space between each of your humble vertebrae

with a beam

of Something holy.

Effervescent.

Super-charged.

Electric.

I must wrap you in sunlight and keep you there.

refuse to see you as anything but.

"We are all just columns of Light," she says.

'Babies.  We're just babies, man.'  

Can ya' dig?

I must breathe in the aroma of Sunshine

and carry its essence with me on the days,

weeks, months

GodInHEAVenForbid

even Years

where all about is gray.

and shadow

I must carry my own damn flashlight

charge the battery at night upon my bedside table

have it ready.

to illumine some portion of the Way.

Have it ready.

Cast a beam into the abyss of forgetfulness

the chasm of regret.

Where you tooo have fallen

lost your footing

a faulty dance step.

Temporarily forgetting yourself

that you are just Light

You are just a column of the Divine.

And I must remember this for you.

For myself.

And for us.

I will catch my breath and hold my tongue

letting my angry words dissolve

into particles of Empty Sound

& light.

I will carry the lantern.

I will safeguard it with this beating heart

and these two shaking hands.

I will remember who you really are.

Carry your secret name inside the torch-lit passages of memory.

* and Love*

And when you are ready to hear it once more

I will open my mouth

Reverberating molecules of light and Song

And I will remind you.  Again.

tiny circles...

abhyasa (part 1) ("to throw toward".... consistent, diligent practice...)

There are days when you just can't.  I can't.  When the still, petaled voice urges you to nudge up to the basin of the well and gaze inside.  Urges you to stare past the still, calm surface of the water and find what depths and hidden treasures lay inside.  To stir shit up, plumb the depths and emerge victorious, a string of diver's pearls clung victoriously in your tenacious fist.

And then there's Monday.  The tongue-tying, heart-stomping, effort-squashing bitch of the week.  Where all one's heartfelt efforts are rewarded by prematurely sore muscles, a slight headache, and nothing but useless SPAM in your inbox.  There is never enough coffee.  You are almost always on your damn period.  The cavities of the house greet you with unwashed sheets and foreign, desultory smells.  And whatever glorious vistas you imagined yourself scaling over the freewheeling, punch-drunk weekend turn to dog-eared postcards in your flailing, inept palms.  Glories only glimpsed, never realized.

Today you know you must not do the following: Start a diet.  Scrutinize your bank statement.  Begin training for that marathon.  Master crow pose.  Give up wheat.  Call your Mother and lovingly inquire as to her health.  You must not paint your bathroom red in an attempt to keep from cleaning out the bottom drawer you've been avoiding these past 6 months, its contents starting to collect a white sheen of dust and mold.  This is not the day that, after a toddler-induced, 3-month long dry spell, you decide you and your husband are going to become adept practitioners of Tantra, beginning each day, (after oil-pulling, many cups of herbal tea and vippassana, of course) with a pre-dawn bout of passionate love-making, your chakras and auras entwined, while the cooperate munchkin obediently snoozes. Today is not the day to stand on your hands in the middle of the room for five whole minutes and it is not the day to spearhead a large political uprising or start a revolution.
Neither major nor minor.

Or maybe it is....

Cuz maybe you will forgo pancakes for breakfast.  And that will be that.  You will jog around your neighborhood for 12 whole minutes, noticing the change of the light as the fog makes echoes through the ancient, greenery of trees.  You will hold your breath and diligently dial your Mama, then thank the gods for the sweet invention of voicemail as you deliver her your best, most shiniest Good Daughter message, whilst patting yourself on the back.  Today is the day you will fold half of that tower of laundry, and maybe slip your hubbie some tongue into the usual workaday smooch on your way out the door, where the gym and precisely 13 seconds of handstand await.

Today's revolutions will be like any other.  Small, consistent, unremarkable in either breadth or distance.  In the grand scheme of things, they will rise to the height and audacity of a hill of beans.

But maybe some of them are magic.  Maybe some of them will sprout.  Through the lackluster sweat of your day-in-day-out effort, one day shall arise those glorious, fabled mansions in the sky.  A hulk of vivid, mythic vine unfurling itself skyward from the humble spot in the ground you've been toiling all the while.  And you will gaze upward at its mystic majesty, wonderingwhat celestial realms await you at its end.  And then you will reach out your hand and position your feet once more, and once again begin to Climb.

yogi by design.

There is no time I am more fond of being in my own skin than after the sweaty, heady, gleeful and grueling experience of leading asana.  Standing before a group of twenty or so stretchy-pant clad bodies, familiar to me in form and face by now; doing by best to convey the particular play with gravity, the insistent handprints as they float up into handstands, reminding them to breathe, stay present, smile and welcome whatever sensations are floating up to meet them on that breath, that moment, dripping down in that morsel of sweat.  Laying there, tired little corpses, I thumb through my latest book of poems or pithy tidbits, the final frosting on this lovely cake we've come and baked together, once again.  And in that, and the few moments or hours that follow, I feel most like myself.  I like myself.  This me.  This version who stands before a full-length mirror, sweaty, covered in my own salty dew, energized, awakened: viscerally reconnected to a deep well of gratitude, grace, strength, wisdom, even a little bit of verve.  She is the woman I most want to inhabit.  I want to wear this particular sheath and skin all damn day, every day.

When I studied theater, in what seems like several lifetimes before, I can recall certain moments upon the stage, a hit of transcendance; those infinitesmal windows where the work you'd so painstakingly put in the weeks, months, yeras previous - coalesced in a breath of pure Grace.  you'd hit the mark: embodied the thing you set out to embody; raised these humble bones and tissues to a place of otherworldly greatness and design.  Shakespeare's tragic heroine, Isben's calm, statuesque epiphany, Glinda the effervescently giddy and Good, or a gospel-singing waitress -- each, in turn, however fleetingly, sprung to life inside your humble cells, occupying your voice, manners, fingers, hips and ways.  Through humble entreatry, tenacious grit and dumb repetition -- You'd made them live.  And perhaps a soul or two in the tiny audience caught sight of it too.  And you silently thanked them for witnessing your humble, fleeting but glorious transformation.

And then the curtain closes.  The lights go dim.  Cinderella removes those damned awful, cramping glass slippers.  And it seems, once more, that everything becomes just as it was.

The glamour and passion of the moment faded.  What shimmered mere seconds ago retreats to a dismal, faded gray.  Only the memory remains.

And this is how I feel with this practice sometimes.   That in that consecrated space of wood floors, light, sticky magic rubber carpets and a sweet mist of perspiration: I get a tiny picture window with a view:of the woman I'd like to be, the world I want to inhabit, the thing I am aching to create.

And then it shuts.

By the wind, or my own doing, there it goes.  A gorgeous vista once more shaded from view.

So, it occurs to me, perhaps, I am done fucking around with windows.  I want to build a whole damn house.  Repair the one I'm in or be ready to smash the wrecking ball through an entire wall, kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom; be ready to move plumbing, light fixtures, stairs and electrcity.  I may have to camp in the backyard for a while, whilst this Dream House 'o mine is being built.  With these two hands.  This heart.  Humble stack of bones and fascia and flesh.

For, as we know, as the sages,both modern and ancient have told us:
Yoga is not a means of self-improvement.
Yoga is not a means of self-improvement.

If all you ever gain from the practice is a round, high ass and a few gravity-defying party tricks to show your friends..... you're doing it wrong.

Missing the point.

Far from a product to be consumed, it is a presciption for work.  A blueprint, which, when painstakingly, humbly, seekingly, devotedly employed: will shape the raw materials of your heart and life into a thing of unflappable Beauty.  The window becomes a door, and then a hearth, a home:  a solid spot to knead some bread, retreat from the storm, invite others to bask in its warmth, the glow, a spot to crank up the tunes and dance.

And I am told, the longer this practice continues to call to me, its sages and seekers: the ever-growing wave of wisdom continuing to wash over me: that this place does, in fact, already exist.  This beatific, imagined inner real estate I catch snippets and glimpses of, stand upon its threshold whenever I pause to breathe, move, stretch, get quiet and reflect.  It's in me.  and the mat, and the chants and the four corners of my hands and feet, the ancient texts and modern re-visions, they're just part of the Map.  Coalescing in a giant arrow - directing me to my True North.  Words, acts and symbols: guiding me home.

...sing me a Love song....

So i'm spending lots of time with Durga these days.  ya' know.  that lovely Hindu deity who straddles tigers and lions as her primary form of transportation, fights demons in her spare time, knows her way around a sword and can counter all resistance with the heat and concentration of pure, unadulterated LUUUUVVVV.  not that ooey-gooey saccarchin shit but the type that can Move MOUNTAINS.  Yeah.  that kind.

so.  we're hanging.  she and me.  she's occupying a little corner of my schmancy roll-top desk my parents just bequeathed me.  casting me a sidelong glance with that celestial glimmer of hers' each time i look up to take a breath, or take a look around.  incline my head for a mini burst of inspiration.  and she meets me.  this paper depiction of righteousness, beauty and strength.  and we do a breathy little tango, she and I....  me inhaling her image, her symbols, her reminders and remembrances...  maybe even a smidgeon of her girly-hurly-burly strength.... her guts and grandness.  borrow a snippet of her generosity.  and grace.  and she emits a low Hummmmm.....  somewhere between Eartha Kitt and Muddy Waters....  cuz any goddess -pal 'o mine, she knows her way around the blues....  and she lends me her freedom, her heaven, touching down to my earth...  a small sip of her air... reminding me that it's the same stuff I've got swirling in and around me.  if only i would care to remember.  once more.

the great Natalie Goldberg does this lovely thing to combat the naggings, war-mongering, and endless oscar-the-snappy-ass-drunken-grouch rumblngs of the Inner Critic.  Craft yourself a sweetheart.  A person, real or imagined, or a gorgeous compilation of all the high holy aspects you can name of all the souls of this world, or any other, who fill your heart with JOY.  Give 'em gusto.  Give 'em balls.  Or better - tits.  and a fabulous caboose.  grant them the voice of a young and hopeful Judy Garland, an aged to perfection Nina Simone, a sinewy Martha Graham, Mother Theresa and your dear Aunt Marilyn.  Roll them into some holy, omnipotent alchemy - able to combat the demons of inadequacy and fear, impotence and anxiety - melt them with a single honeyed tone or crumbling, benevolent glance.  Infuse them with all the Mirth and Gusto they could want, in order to lay that cat-calling jerk-face wildebeast you've been taking orders from these umpteen years past in a bed of its' own shame.  She can tell 'em all to go to hell.  and you can help them pack their bags.

Cuz that Chorus of Woe - who've been humming their endless tune of mockery and smug mediocrity - turns out they're just sitting there.  chain-smoking and squinting atop creaky, fold-up metal chairs.  Their seats are cold and hard.  Their feet chained to where they lay.  And they're always more than happy to have you in the mix.  mired in your own thick shit.  or theirs'.

And so you choose a Singer - whose voice can drown out all the rest.  A song so sweet and flowing, your feet begin tap-tapping....  your heart again to beat...  the breath coming heavy in your chest, your stomach and toes.

And She drives a sweet ride, this Singer of Yours - maybe a lion or tiger - my oh my - a cherry moped or a ten-speed bike - and she beams and offers you a LIFT.  and quietly extends a HAND....

and maybe it's not all so very grand as Myths and Deities.  Maybe your Honey prefers jeans and Top 40.  and maybe rides the Bus.

But how good to know... you've got a Sweetheart - in there - out there.  Somewhere.  Ready.  Whenever you decide to look.....

...step-ball-change...

I'm in the market for a teacher.  For a few in fact.  On this, the tenth day of the 14th year of the century, I find myself in a unique and possibly brilliant place.  I am admitting my finite skills, knowledge, my lack of expertise.  Although there are days when I believe myself to be posessed of some greater intuition which renders actual practical learning secondary, I am determined that this year is the one to say poo-poo to that notion.  Get my butt back in the learner's seat, my head back in the beginner's mind schoolyard, momentarily set aside all I think I know about walkin' and get down on the floor - and crawl.  Nice and slow like.  Inhale the carpet, notice the texture in between the tiles, re-acquaint myself with the ground.

chart a slow course to the sky ...

There is something incredibly liberating about this willing self-abasement.  By positing the notion that perhaps, I do not know everything... I once again open a window, a big, creaky door, or hell, I might just be blowing the whole damn roof off my now too-small hobbit hole.  There may be a great open sky right above me - filled with light and stars and galaxies my mind has never to explore.  I only needed the proper hands to direct my sight.  The proper set of spectacles rendered by an expert opthamologist.

I guess it all depends on where you want to go.  If I'm happy to stay enmeshed in my little hillside hovel, crouched down beneath the same dank ceiling, vacuuming the same damn floor day and again, re-arranging the furniture and acquiring a new plant or two to brighten the dump then hey.  More power to me.  But if, like now, at the dawn of this new Gregorian juncture, when newness beckons its' opportunites on each corner, and I feel the urge to let the the codes and catechisms I've put to memory move aside in favor of a few (hundred) new folds in the brain...it's time.

a none too original cry but again...

...If not now then When?....

For there are books I want to write.  Languages my tongue is tickling acquire.  I want to not be a big dummy about money.  I want to know what it's like to have a strong circle of really, truly rad, radical, deeply human and gorgeous girlfriends.  I want to stand in the middle of the living room on my own damn head. And then stand on my hands, an elbow and maybe the delicate skin of a forearm or two.  Rinse, wiggle, Repeat.

I want to write dialogue that doesn't suck.

I want standing up in front of a crowd, reading a snippet of my songs or wails or storms or poetry, with a well-tuned ukulele in my hand - I want it to be commonplace, like taking the dog out for a walk, peanut butter sandwiches and saying, "I Love You".  Just another shade of thread in the ever-rich, developing tapestry of my One Wild Life.

I want to speak French beyond the level of a drunken kindergartener.

I want to know what it is to be a woman of strength, beauty, great character, tenacity and grit.  And maybe it'd be nice to have a couple folks or so see me rock that role for a minute or two. ...

I want to throw away the playbook and the script I've been sloggedly-monkey-type-typing for the last 30-sum years and step out into the wide open place where maybe Anything.. can happen.

I wannna stand there in the middle and throw out a hand to someone, anyone else - who maybe needs a little nudging in the direction of that Beautiful, Bright Beyond-ness... and maybe share a dance step or two I've learned along the way...

But for now.

My feet are tapping.  My heart is ready.
I am holding out my hand.

Ready to foxtrot, tango, tapdance or fly.

And I'm on the lookout for those someones who can come and show me how.

I'm trolloping the pavement. I'm knockin' on doors.  I'm sounding the call.  But in the meantime...

If you see them out there, positing their particular brand of brilliance, oh won't you please...

Send 'Em Down My Way.

taste this...

there is this couple whom i don’t know but are friends of friends... i suppose. i see their posters up whenever they come thru town en route to or from some exotic locale like bali or costa rica... somewhere with an abundance of sandy beaches, coconuts, waves & adorned navels. ….. but anyway... i saw the briefly at a festival we were attending on maui - super pretentious kinda’ schtuff.. costing hundreds of dollars to get in, camp, dine on inordinately-slow prepped raw cuisine and get exorbitantly long hugs from lit-up and woodsy smelling strangers. huh.

and there they were... just the two of them.. with names like shiva linga simphonia & her partner rama llama more-blessed-than-yo-mama... or something like that...

and they were simple. quiet. humbly sitting in the corner waiting for their plate of warm plant food or setting up mats in a quiet corner of the dome to do some simple breathing, moving... whatnot... unlike all the other swirling, dancing, fairy-wing laced grandeur all around them i remember thinking they were so simple.. so humble. so plain. something so unassuming about their mannerisms and their presence... it made me think there must be something deeper, more lovely & real in whatever offering they were there to present that weekend. no fanfare, no entourage... no floating feathers & vegan fair-trade lace trailing behind them to announce their glorious arrival. just the two of them- silent- hand-in-hand - dressed simply in white smiling - waiting, for the next assignment to emerge, guitars and sticky rubber mats at the ready. waiting. breathing..

and so whenever they cruise into town they offer this workshop... a puja in fact... which i suppose is just a fancy, easternly-borrowed word for a ritual - that glorious transmogrification of the ordinary into something Other - a deifying of space... consecrating the oh so mundane and rendering it sacred.... and they call it the Altar of Love - i don’t know what it looks like - i believe it involves cacao in some form or another - and i imagine there is candlelight - and soft music - perhaps recitation of words not quite english - perhaps bells and gongs and the laying on of hands and gazing into another pair of eyes for interminable periods of time and breathing deeply into sustained, otherwise uncomfortable silences...

but they offer it again & again... there must be something there.

and i have never taken it. don’t know if i will. maybe just slink off on my own to some darkened corner and eat an overpriced chocolate bar there - listening to the nutty nubby of its crunch in my mouth, between my imperfect teeth, let the flavors sit a moment longer than usual upon my tongue and think about sweetness.... in all its’ forms... (and maybe bitterness too - the flavor that is chocolate to begin with, no??) then brush my grubby hands off on my well-worn jeans and continue on with the day.... having knelt for a moment at my own little altar.... tasted sweetness, bitterness, et al.. in the quiet corners of my own little shrine... my home.. my cavity... the quaint and messy ode to being i’ve helped to consecrate... with paint and artwork, records & instruments, wrinkled tapestries and hand-me-down furniture --- and more books than you could possibly read... this. my altar. my day. my corner. my bittersweet chocolate bar - my own little puja …..

and i keep thinking about this thing - the altar of love - it’s a phrase that keeps coming to mind over the past week or so - where absolutely nothing has been going right - where all i can think about is death and madness - shitty diapers and piles of laundry... this quietly eeking into domestic non-existence.... all the lights once shone so bright now fading down into a molten, screaming monotone of white... kitchen paint fluorescent... the colors which once danced now static... painted. flat. wallpaper. chipped.

altar of love - because in the midst of this desperate domesticity - where there is little sex, ugly brown carpet & endless, mindless to=dos waiting for me... there is this pinpoint - this radiant, sunspot of light glistening right in the middle - my daughter - cliche and corny though it is to say -radiant and beautiful and smiling and gurgling and screaming and pooping and....... well - it’s her. this beautiful upshoot of sheer life force - who at times i cannot even handle. cannot navigate. but her. so beautiful and lovely and raging and pure - and there are times right now - as she is so young and pliant and still baby-smelling and light - that i breathe her in - deep down into the pit of my belly - into the base of my pelvis - down the length of my spine - into the pith of my bones..... and it is the purest form of love that i know - and i tell her - absentmindedly whispering, cooing into the side of her hair - that you know when i’m with you all i want is to be with you - that andnothing else - no bills to pay, no chores, no lists or planning or phone calls or grown uppery bullshit - just this - this rolling on the floor and eating cheerios and squeaking, shrieking at the funny noises that emit from our bodies and our throats - growls, squeaks, delight - that everything done with her is auxillary - a divine chore - from the steaming of broccoli to the tucking in of endless fluffy blankets to the giving of baths - to the umpteenth reading of the seussian foot book of that day - all these things - endless, tissuey pages in the larger TomE - that is my deep Deep LOVE for her - and i take her and i hold her and i breathe her sweet sweet floating, dizzying scent - and all of a sudden i remember that this is it - the job i have signed on for - so sweet, intoxicating, neverending and exhausting - the business - the busy-iness of LOVE - this thing dwelling so deep inside my belly and my bones... my unpaid profession of right now which takes up all my time, my mind and energy - which at times leaves me feeling all dried up, aged, whithered and beaten.... - but lets me hold this thing in my body - my tissues absorbing the nutrients it gives - LOVE - to know it so deeply and purely - a joy so piercing it can make you weep. ….. …

altar of Love..... something involving cacao.... for it is lingering, and bitter... just as much as it is sweet. … A Puja... by any other name..... the deity wearing fornow the face of my sweet-puffy-faced child. …. rosy cheeks and slippery smiling lips. … 6 teeth... and a slight rash from where she rubbed against the sofa... and i - me - enmeshed inthis daily bit of offering - myself, my talents, my time - my life force, and energy - all engaged (even when sleeping it seems ) in this business of Love - to know it, sense it and bow to its’ presence now planted deep within me... thought it takes all i am - leaves me with little to offer to the man i share this baby this bed with,,,, little reserves for the endless projects and beautiful dreams and imaginings i would also like to birth into the larger sphere of the world... altar of Love... how i gaze upon it every day.... my eyes so accustomed to its beauty sometimes i can’t see... … i live here now. daily.

and my reverence is not what it could be - and my devotion is weak and wandering - and still …. and still....

i have been granted this goodness. my kernel of Divine blessing & beauty in smelly, soggy pants form. … and i am learning to see it. i am learning, broken down, splayed wide at times... what it takes to be a devotee... lose my life (the one i dreamed about and seem to have misplaced somewhere between the electric bill and the thank you notes i have yet to write ) in order that i may find IT. It the big I-T. - learning day by day what it means to abandon your smallness and all my ideas on what i thought this life should be - the form my Love should take and inhabit - and offer it up to that larger Being - altar of Love - i quietly rest my head... i bow.